“All I see is shadow,” said Murdock.
“It’s him,” I said. The darkness in front of me swelled and undulated against the building, feathering along the cornice of the first floor. Around it, vitniri darted and snarled, avoiding its edge. Whenever the shadow shifted, the lupine figures backed away. Whether the alpha held them in check or they sensed danger in the shadow’s touch made no difference to me. They weren’t going to die because I had asked for their help.
Meryl primed her hands with essence but left them at her sides. “He’s using some kind of shield to hide behind. It’s being generated by an essence spot near the ground.”
I peered into the shadow with my sensing ability. The darkness made a pale white haze seem brighter than it was. It moved and shifted down near the curb. Living essence moved around, not stone wards. “He’s got Gretan with him. She has a cloaking ability.”
“The nixie who left the bite scars in your neck?” Meryl asked.
“She left scars?” My hand went to the back of my neck. The last time I had encountered Vize, the small blue nixie jumped on my back and bit me. Her tiny claws left their marks, too. I hadn’t realized they scarred.
“Upper teeth. She could use an orthodontist,” Meryl said.
The dark mass in my head ached as it contracted again. Across the square, a tendril of darkness snaked out of Vize’s shadow and stabbed at one of the vitniri. The lupine jumped away without being touched as his brothers moved closer on the other side. Another tendril shot out as the first one withdrew, and the shadow shifted. Vize seemed unable to spread his attack, and the vitniri used their numbers to keep him pinned. Even though he had the power of the darkness, he was outnumbered. It was a stalemate.
“What’s our plan?” Murdock asked.
Meryl hardened her shield as some vitniri danced around us. “When you fought him in TirNaNog, I saw a shadow like that appear when you made contact. It knocked you off your feet.”
“It hurt like hell, too,” I said.
“If you do that again, maybe Murdock and I can subdue him before he regains his balance,” she said.
“Not with the nixie shielding him,” I said. Vize didn’t have a body shield anymore. Despite her small size, Gretan generated a formidable shield for both of them. Meryl would be able to penetrate it, but that would draw their attention and make her a primary target. I didn’t want that, not after her coma and not after her doubts about the sanity of my plan. A physical assault wasn’t going to get us anywhere.
“Then let’s get rid of her.” Before I could stop her, Meryl set her stance, stretched her arm out, and fired a tight, intense burst of essence from her hand. It sliced through the nixie’s shield and hit the faint hazy body signature dead-on. The shield evaporated as the nixie tumbled out of the shadow, a blur of blue skin and white hair that stopped splayed out on the sidewalk. Vize’s image resolved into view within the darkness.
Meryl waggled her fingers. “Damn, that burned.”
The nixie didn’t move. “Is she dead?” asked Murdock.
Meryl flicked her bangs back. “Nah. Precision stun. Word to the wise, Murdock: Having a kickin’ body shield doesn’t mean it’s invulnerable if someone knows what they’re doing.”
A plume of darkness raced across the intersection and slammed into Meryl. Her body shield collapsed. She stumbled, and I caught her as she shielded herself again.
“Point taken,” Murdock said.
Vize leaned over Gretan, shadows swirling around him.
“Shoot him,” I said.
Murdock aimed his gun. I don’t know what was sadder about that moment, that I asked my friend to shoot somebody or that he considered doing it. “Bergin Vize, this is the Boston police. Get down on the ground with your hands out.”
Vize ignored him as he lifted Gretan from the ground.
Meryl held her hand out for the gun. “I’ll do it.”
Murdock relaxed his stance but didn’t holster the gun. “No. There has to be another way.”
“If killing one person could save the world, would you do it, Leo?” I asked.
“No one’s that important, Connor,” he said.
I stared at the darkness, stared at Vize in the darkness. He stared back, keeping the vitniri at bay with feints and starts of shadow, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. He acted too calm for the position he was in. He had a plan. I didn’t want to give him any more time to execute it. “You’re right, Leo, but not the way you meant.”
As I walked away from Meryl, her shield slipped off me and the staccato beat of scrying hit my mind. She started to follow. “Please, stay back, Meryl. Leo’s right. I started this, and I have to end it. One person doesn’t matter.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Don’t do this, Connor.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the one here he’s afraid of,” I said.
She pressed against me. “You don’t know that. You don’t.”
I glanced at Murdock. “You can always shoot him if you change your mind.”
He shook his head and looked away. “Maybe I’ll shoot both of you.”
Despite my lack of popularity with the Murdocks, I told myself he was joking. I was sure he was. Pretty sure.
Vitniri paced beside me as I crossed the intersection. Several ran close in, their eyes glazed with the heat of the hunt, tongues lolling as they scented me. One or two nipped at my clothing, then backed off, barking in frustration or confusion.
I hadn’t seen Vize since the night of the riots in the Weird. Then, he had been a little worse for wear—binding burns, cuts, bruises, and a nice split across his cheek where I had clocked him. He pulled the darkness back, let it rise and curl over us like a canopy. It didn’t touch me. Touching each other had ramifications, usually bad ones. That much Vize understood.
He cradled Gretan against his chest. “Odd company you are keeping,” he said.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said.
“You’ll miss the point of all this if you do,” he said.
“There is no point, Vize. There never was. It’s all chaos and power games,” I said.
He arched his eyebrow. “And you’re playing and being played. Of course, it’s chaos and power. The reach for power always causes chaos. It’s the Wheel of the World, Grey. Without chaos, there is no change, and without change, nothing progresses.”
“You expect me to believe you’re in this for progress? This city is in ruins because of you. You’re not going to spread your brand of progress. I won’t let you. It ends here.”
“You know you can’t touch me,” he said.
“I don’t have to,” I said. I pulled the dagger from my boot, the enchanted one that Briallen had given me. It radiated heat, the runes on the blade glistening with pale fire. The air around my hand rippled, and the blade stretched to the length of a sword. I held it with the tip stopping short of Vize’s chest.
Unimpressed, Vize looked down at the blade, then back at me. “You think you can kill me. You’re not who you think you are.”
I pressed the tip against his tunic. “Last chance to surrender.”
He lifted his hand, not toward the sword, but toward empty space. “And you.”
The air crackled with a blinding white flash of essence, and a spear appeared in his hand. Not any spear, but the spear—the one that had disappeared when I closed the gate into TirNaNog. The spear had bonded to me, to my body signature back then. It operated by some arcane set of rules no one knew. Vize had bonded with it, also, and, for some reason, it preferred him to me at that moment.
Vize pressed the tip against my jacket. The dark mass in my head burned against my skull. Spots flashed before my eyes as I tried to fight against the pain they generated. “Where did you get that?” I asked.
With a flip of his wrist that I should have seen coming, he parried the sword away and slammed the spear against the side of my knee. I fell on all fours. The dark mass bulged against the back of my right eye, pressing forward. Vize grabbed me
by the hair and wrenched my head back. “I will have the stone, Grey. The only way to stop the Seelie Court is to destroy it.”
Streaks of essence-fire rained into the intersection. Vize tilted his head up to watch. “And I am not without allies.”
In TirNaNog, a ragtag collection of Celtic and Teutonic fey had joined his cause, some powerful enough to take on Danann fairies and Alfheim elves. I didn’t realize how many of them had managed to hide in the city.
Darkness sprang from my eye and hit Vize in the face. The contact jolted me to my feet as it slammed him against the wall. I staggered back as essence seared the air between us.
Get out of there. I flinched at the force of Meryl’s sending.
Vitniri screamed and howled as they scattered. Fairies swept the air, firing down. Solitaries flooded into the streets from the surrounding buildings. Behind me, Meryl and Murdock pushed across the street, their hardened body shields sizzling with the incandescent light of essence strikes.
Vize smiled at me as he pulled darkness around him and Gretan like a cloak, the spear blazing within it like white flame. The dark mass seeped out of my eye. With a shout of pain, I contracted my body essence, helping the darkness release.
The darkness boiled out of my chest in a cloud. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t care. I fed it my anger, and the darkness leaped forward, hitting Vize’s cluster of darkness like a fist. I flew backwards from the contact, hitting the pavement. I blacked out, my vision, already cluttered, going darker. The blackout lasted a few seconds, my awareness returning to see the backs of Meryl and Murdock over me as they held off attacks from either side.
I pulled myself up a wrought-iron fence. Essence-fire pinned us down, but Meryl’s and Murdock’s shields held it off. The air in front of us rippled, and Uno’s hulking form appeared, his shape swelling in size as he howled against the sky. Fey folk scrambled away in fear. Murdock swung his firing arm back and forth, panic etched on his face.
“What the hell is that?” Meryl shouted.
“I told you I got a dog. A big dog,” I said.
The sky lit with a growing halo of blue light that swept into the square as a boiling haze. Uno pressed against us, forcing us away from the fighting. Shouts echoed against the shadowed walls of a narrow street. The essence billowed toward us, clouds of indigo and white filling the width of the street. It hit Murdock’s shield in a shower of yellow sparks. His hardened crimson body shield bent and shifted, forcing itself back against the wave. He had learned how to deal with the essence wave from our last encounter.
Figures ran in the fog, distorted human shapes that leaped and screamed. They swept by us in eddies of blue, essence I recognized. The Wild Hunt had come calling, and it was attacking Vize’s allies.
A deep indigo light flickered in the midst of the Hunt. As it rolled closer, people fled in confusion. The shape resolved into a huge figure on a dream mare, its eyes burning with fierce red light. The rider reined the beast and turned it toward us. The horse stamped its feet, bloodred sparks flying up from the pavement. The rider stared down, eyes glowing with flames from a helmet mounted with enormous antlers.
Follow. The sending had a rich, deeper baritone that made me shiver. With a jab of sharp-heeled leather boots, the rider wheeled the dream mare about and cantered down the street.
30
The blue light of the Dead flickered as the Hunt continued the fight on the next block. Murdock stared after the rider. “Was that a friend?”
“If I’m not mistaken, we’ve been invited to follow the King of the Dead.”
“What, like the devil?” Murdock asked.
I twisted my lips in amusement. “The King’s more of an administrator and occasional hunter, but I don’t think that means he’s the nicest guy around, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And we want to go meet him because . . . ?” Murdock asked.
I looked back up the street. Uno guarded the sidewalk, his massive bulk obscuring the scene in the intersection. “Given the options at the moment, I say the King of the Dead is the least of our problems. Don’t drop your body shield, though.”
“Great,” he muttered.
Meryl slipped her hand in mine. “You know, usually when we go out, all hell breaks loose, but I don’t think it’s ever been this literal.”
The sounds of the fighting diminished as we walked deeper into the Tangle. Faint blue light hazed the air, the residual trail of the dream mare and the rider. The surrounding walls glowed pale white. The street turned into a dead end.
“Did we miss a turn, or is it an illusion?” Murdock asked.
I stepped up to the end wall. “The rider’s essence ends here. It’s a glamour.” I placed my left hand against the wall and pushed. The concrete bent under the pressure, and my hand slipped through.
“Do I hold my breath or what?” Murdock asked.
“Geez, we were invited, remember?” Meryl said. Without hesitation, she walked through the wall.
“I didn’t get the invitation,” Murdock said.
“Door glamours aren’t that thick. Hang on to my arm and step through without stopping. You’ll be fine,” I said.
He gripped my arm by the triceps, leaving his gun hand free. “I’m sure Gerda Alfheim was told the exact same thing right before the wall ate her,” he said.
The glamour tingled cool over my body as we slid through the illusion to join Meryl. On the other side, light and sound startled me. Murdock was even more surprised than I was. We hadn’t heard anything from the street.
A makeshift market sprawled through a cavernous space. Essence-powered lanterns hanging from scaffolding and fire escapes illuminated a winding path through canvased stalls and tents. Herbs and essence spiced the air, and unseen musicians weaved spelled tunes meant to encourage relaxation and camaraderie. The crowd spanned the various fey folk races, with a notable number of dwarves and minor clan elves. A dwarf paused in front of us and bowed with formal courtesy. “My apologies the Hunt gave you trouble. We did not know you were favored. I have been asked to escort you.”
Without waiting for a reply, he led us through the tents. The main aisle followed an abandoned trolley track bed. Vendors eyed us, but no one made an attempt to solicit. “People seem intent on the door we came in,” Murdock said.
“I think they’re worried about who’s coming through next,” I said.
“Or isn’t,” he said.
His comment made me remember the screams up the street. “We don’t know what happened back there.”
“Something tells me we won’t either,” he said.
At the end of the vendor stalls, stone constructions jutted from the walls and rose into shadow. From glimpses through open doors, some had the look of barracks about them, compact bedding in rows and bunks. Other build-outs were more private, even elaborate. True to the abilities of dwarves, not a speck of mortar was visible in the joinings of the structures. At the back end, the outcroppings were decorated with carvings of wildlife and trees.
Another glamour blocked the way, radiating a green essence of complex alarm spells and resistance shielding. The dwarf walked through it, his presence triggering another spell that opened the wall as if someone had pulled aside a curtain. Beyond was an enclosed room, a long, narrow space like an audience chamber, lit with torches. A single chair faced us from the far end. The dwarf knocked on a door behind the chair, then stepped aside and waited.
The rider emerged, wearing the long maroon cape I had seen earlier. Back in the street, I assumed I couldn’t see his face because of the poor lighting, but now it was obvious that a glamour masked the front of the helm. In any other context, stag antlers and burning red eyes would have generated giggles, but in the shadowed room, they looked damned eerie. A formidable body shield guarded that side of the room.
Drop your shields, the rider sent.
“Well, well, well,” Meryl said. Amused, she dropped her shield.
“No,” said Murdock.
His answe
r surprised the dwarf, but the rider made no move. We regarded each other until the rider’s shield wavered and collapsed. Since you do not have your weapon pointed at me this time, I suppose I shall take that as courtesy, Detective.
The rider reached up and removed the helm. Two long, thick braids of red hair tumbled from within as the glamour deactivated. The rider threw back one side of the cape, revealing a formfitting red leathered armor. Ceridwen sat in the chair and propped the helm on the arm. “My apologies for what happened to you a few days ago, Grey. The Hunt should have recognized my ring.”
In life, Ceridwen had been a powerful member of the Seelie Court. As an underQueen, she helped decide on who would be High Queen or could campaign for it herself. Maeve sent her to investigate me and Meryl about our role in a different catastrophe. That was the cover story. It turned out she was tracking rumors that Bergin Vize was about to launch an attack on Maeve. The rumors were true, and Ceridwen ended up Dead.
After she died, she surprised me by showing up at my door. She gave me a ring, in token of a promise we made to each other to take Maeve down. “I wasn’t wearing it. I didn’t want to invite questions.”
Annoyed, she shifted in her seat. “That ring represents a great promise, Grey. I trust it has not been tossed in some forgotten drawer.”
“In this neighborhood? Are you kidding? I don’t even leave lottery tickets at my place.” I unsnapped the boot sheath that held my old dagger and slipped the ring off the leather strap. I held it up. “It’s safe.”
Meryl leaned in. “She gave you a ring? You didn’t tell me she gave you a ring.”
I nudged her with my elbow. “Behave.”
Ceridwen rose with her hand out. I dropped the ring onto her palm. Melancholy flitted across her features as she touched it. It was a fine band of gold set with a large carnelian. She reached for my left hand and slipped the ring on my pinkie finger. “This will keep you safe from the Hunt. They will sense it and know you for a friend. You can use it to seek my audience at any time. It cannot be removed without my blessing.”
Uncertain Allies Page 21
