Undone Deeds

by Del Franco, Mark

  “You either,” she said.

  I don’t think either of us believed we would have a choice. It was nice to think we would, though. Maybe this time we would. I slipped off the bed and pulled my jeans on. “Bathroom break. I’ll be back,” I said.

  She stared at me, bemused. “I know.”

  I glanced at her, curious at her tone, but she was checking her nails. As I left the room, a door opened down the hall, and Murdock stepped out. We both stopped short, glancing back and forth as if looking for an escape. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  He closed the door behind him and slipped his hands in his pockets. “I know people on the force who aren’t happy with the side we’re on.”

  “Were you one of my secret bodyguards all this time?” I asked.

  He frowned. “If there’s one thing that never changes about you, Connor, it is the crazy that comes out of your mouth.”

  “Seriously, Leo. Eagan said all my partners knew,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  A strange sense of relief settled over me. “So, all this time we’ve been friends, it’s been because we’re friends?”

  “I’m still not getting what you’re talking about, but I’ll say, yeah, we were friends,” he said.

  “Were?” I asked.

  He studied his feet. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I’ve been wondering if everyone who’s saved my life did it because some vision told them it was necessary,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes at me, a little confusion and a little annoyed. “I’m not even going to respond to that.”

  I grinned. “Actually, that’s the perfect response. Thanks. Are you okay?”

  “It is what it is.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Murdock tilted his head. “I know. I still don’t blame you. That doesn’t mean being around you is easy.”

  “I get that. I’m glad you’re here, though,” I said.

  “And I’m glad you’re alive,” he said.

  I held my hand out, and he shook it.

  “Let’s go take down a fairy queen,” I said.

  46

  Dawn came according to the clock, but a darkness lay over the city. The sky rippled with curtains of essence, dark indigos and maroons shifting and swirling like a painting by a madman. Ceridwen and I stood on top of the Hancock Tower, sixty stories above the city. The building was the tallest in New England and gave us a view unlike any other. To the east, the ruined Celtic fleet filled the inner harbor, hundreds of broken ships rising and falling on the water’s whitecapped surface. The Weird smoked with fire, dozens of plumes that obscured the horizon. Amid the gloom, essence burned with dazzling brilliance over City Hall Plaza, where Maeve had made her joint headquarters with the human civilian forces.

  “Well, this is a bit daunting,” I said.

  Joe popped in and circled, trying to control his flight in the buffeting winds. He gave up and settled himself among some utility conduits. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was at a party up here, and we accidentally blew out a bunch of windows in the building?”

  “I remember seeing pictures of that when I was a kid,” I said.

  He grinned. “Good times.”

  From our vantage point, subtle changes rippled through the streets, a shifting of essence signatures. Eorla was moving some of her people around as a distraction while her main force gathered in the tunnels beneath the city. Out by the Tangle, the Dead made their own strategic feints toward downtown. Maeve no doubt had her own sentries in place, but I hoped the key movements would be lost in the mix.

  “Everyone’s in place,” Ceridwen said.

  “Remember what I said: Don’t be tempted to stay in any one spot. As soon as you use the spear, she will sense it,” I said.

  Her smile was grim. “I am not a novice at this business, Grey.”

  I grinned at her. “It’s nerves, Ceridwen. Trust me. I know what you’re capable of. I’ve been on the business end of the spear when you’ve had it.”

  She pulled her helm on, and the Hunter glamour settled over her. If nothing else, she was going to scare the hell out of whoever saw her. She held out her hand. “Ithbar,” she said.

  The essence image of the spear in my mind flashed. The spear appeared in her hand and an instant later, Ceridwen was gone. In the distance to the southeast, a brilliant burst lit the sky over Castle Island in Southie. A thunderclap rolled through the air, and the sky above the old fort rippled with an explosion of light. Dark figures dropped through the air, huge unshapely bodies that landed on the island and in the water.

  “Ick. Was that supposed to happen?” Joe asked.

  “It’s a gamble. If we stop Maeve, we’ll have to deal with the Fomorians running loose. If we don’t stop her, there’s not going to be much left around here anyway,” I said.

  On cue, explosions rocked the nearby Thomson Park, the ancient oaks that formed the Boston druid grove went up in flames. Despite the sacred nature of the grove, it could be used as a power source for Maeve’s archdruids. The damage was regrettable—especially for druids—but necessary for the city’s defense.

  “Callin always liked setting things on fire,” Joe said.

  I glanced down at him. “You’re strolling down memory lane today.”

  “Am I? It’s all the same. Yesterday is today is tomorrow. One war is the same as another a hundred years later,” he said.

  The passions of the day meant little to the survivors of tomorrow. We fought over land and power. Win or lose, the grievances remained and festered. Today, Maeve was losing her mind, but I wondered if I was any different. What I intended to do had a smaller chance of success than Maeve’s goal, but a higher chance of saving lives. After the smoke cleared and the bodies were counted, I doubted anyone would care who’d had the better motive.

  As hoped, Maeve’s forces reacted to the distractions. A wave of Dananns swept up from the harbor ships and made for Castle Island. A smaller force went south toward the fort. They were not going to like what they found. The Fomorians had decimated the Dananns long ago. They weren’t going to be in a forgiving mood for being locked in their prison for centuries.

  From the west side of the roof, another wave of essence blew out in Forest Hills. The vast cemetery there had been the site of another battle. Igniting essence over it would destabilize the area and force Maeve’s forces to the ground. With a blast of wind, Ceridwen appeared back at my side. “As predicted, she retrieved the spear.”

  A host of Dananns rose from the Park Plaza Hotel. They gathered in a V-formation, speeding over our heads across the sky. “And there goes the second wave to Forest Hills. Eorla should be in position. Shall we proceed?” Ceridwen asked.

  “I still don’t know what you’re planning, Ceridwen. I can’t plan for contingencies if you don’t tell me,” I said.

  The glamour obscured her face, but I could hear the amusement in her voice. “Success at chess is difficult with only a queen, Connor Grey.”

  I grinned. I bet myself that Ceridwen could do it. “It’s time then,” I said.

  She rose and slipped her hands into the loops on the back of my jumpsuit. With no effort, we soared into the sky, then dropped toward the Common. Ceridwen coasted low, bringing me in from the western side of the park. Maeve had people there, but they were few. Her main forces were in Park Square and heading north toward the Consortium consulate. A few potshots of essence sparkled in the air as we passed, but they seemed to come from people more startled than intent on murder. If only Maeve weren’t so intent.

  Ceridwen dropped me next to the pillar on the hill in the Common. Joe swirled in around us, his sword out, his face set.

  “You are sure I should leave you?” Ceridwen asked.

  “I’m sure. You’ll know when to come back,” I said.

  She held her hand out. “May the gods speak favor when you die.”

  I shook. “M
ay the Ways open to all your paths.”

  Ceridwen glided off through the air toward the Weird. I looked up at Joe. “I need you to leave, Joe. I want to have as few variables as possible for this part.”

  “I don’t know what variables are, but if they’re anything like marbles, I think you don’t have enough,” he said.

  I pointed into the sky, smiling to soften my request. “Go.”

  He pulled a long face, like a chastised child. “You always send me away.”

  “And you always come back,” I said. He tapped the flat of his sword against his forehead and winked before vanishing.

  I trailed around the pillar, letting my hand rub against the cold granite. The essence that burned in the stone flared at my touch. When I sealed the Way into TirNaNog, the pillar had appeared, the last remnant of the Land of the Dead. I thought it was only that, a stone pillar testament to my destruction. And it was. But it was something I hadn’t realized or anticipated then. I couldn’t have because I didn’t remember until now.

  It was the pillar of TirNaNog, but over time, as the gargoyles gathered around it, as the energies of the blocked Ways built within it, it became something more, something vital. It wasn’t just a stone pillar anymore or the pillar of TirNaNog. It was also the Irminsul of the Teutonic tribes, and the standing stones of Carnac and Salisbury Plain, and all the stone pillars that marked the way to all the realms. It was the ash of the Alfheim, the oak of the Aes Sidhe. The pillar had become a metaphor like so many other things in my life, a metaphor for something that mere words could not contain, a connection to the Wheel of the World unlike any other. The gargoyles knew and had waited, drawn to the promise and threat of its power.

  Meryl trudged up the slope. She had two cups in her hands and her giant bag over her shoulder. Our eyes met when she glanced up, and we both smiled. She wore knee-high boots with thick silver buckles and a black body stocking under her leather jacket. She had dyed her hair gray.

  She handed me one of the cups. “I brought you coffee. I’ve got Guinness in my bag for later.”

  We tapped cups. “Thanks,” I said.

  She blew at the hot steam rising from her cup. “There is going to be a later, right? I mean, I paid for the beers this time.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “You know the answer to that.”

  “Heh, thought I’d ask in case you had any revelations,” she said.

  Heydan was standing next to us. One moment he wasn’t there, the next he was. He wasn’t thirty feet tall any longer like he had been on the roof of Yggy’s earlier, but his normal eight. He seemed the most logical choice to go with Meryl. I liked the symmetry of it—male and female, Celt and Teut. Their personalities balanced each other, too. Plus, they liked each other. “Well met,” he said.

  I looked at Meryl. “You don’t have to do this.”

  She took my cup, placed it next to hers on the ground, and wrapped her arms around me. “How often does a girl maybe, possibly, sorta, kinda get the chance to start the universe over if her boyfriend screws up?”

  “We don’t know it will work. You might die,” I said.

  “You don’t know if what you’re about to do will work either, but you’re still going to try it. You might die,” she said.

  I gazed down at her face. “How the hell did this happen to us of all people?”

  She grinned. “Thank the fucking Wheel of the World, babe.”

  I kissed her on the top of the head. “I love you, Meryl Dian.”

  She took my head in her hands and kissed me long and hard on the lips. “I love you, Connor Grey.”

  She stepped back and held her hand out to Heydan. “Ready, big guy?”

  His massive hand closed over hers. Heydan stared down at me, his eyes aglow with white light. He nodded once, then faced the stone. As one, they stepped toward the pillar and vanished. I felt them for a moment as their body signatures danced across the surface of the granite, then they slipped away toward a place I hoped existed, a place the pillar touched, deep inside the Gap.

  The place of the beginning that was the end of all things.

  47

  I was alone.

  My stomach clenched with doubt as I rested my forehead against the pillar. I hoped I was doing the right thing and I had not sent the woman I loved to her death. That she vanished gave me hope that I was right. The pillar reached deep into the Wheel of the World. Maeve hadn’t lied. The source was here. The pillar touched it. I sensed it.

  I lifted my head and searched among the gargoyles. My gaze settled on a little one, a short man, proudly displaying his oversized nakedness. A single horn grew from his forehead. He stared at me with sightless stone eyes. I knew he’d be there.

  “Hey, Virgil,” I said.

  His voice rasped across my mind like sandpaper. Home, he said.

  I placed my hand on the pillar and closed my eyes. Maeve would sense what I was about to do. With luck, she would be delayed as she regrouped her forces. If I timed it right, at least some of this would end well, and I could repay a debt.

  I gasped as essence from the stone coursed through my body like liquid fire. I held out my other hand and released waves of white lightning that danced among the gargoyles, jumping from one to the next. The light merged, became layered streams that revolved around the pillar. Faster and faster they spun, forming a swirling vortex with the pillar at the center

  The gargoyles shuddered, stone coming alive with movement, stone flowing across the ground amid rivers of faint blue light. The blue light blossomed from the gargoyles like flower petals and danced in counterpoint to the white essence. Voices rose, cheers of joy and cries of anguish, as the gargoyles slumped and lost their shapes. The river of stone curved with the heat of the passage of light, lapping the pillar in a solid circle. The essence light revolved, blue and white, until the stone that was the gargoyles became a flat ring on the ground

  I lifted my hand palm upward, chanting the ancient hymn I had invoked so long ago. The ground shook as the stone rose, a massive ring borne on yet more massive columns. A great wind came up as lightning filled the sky. I dropped my hands to my sides, breathing air crisp with the spark of electricity. The white essence light settled onto the stone, became one with it, infused it with a power that I had feared had been lost to the World. The stone ring stood around the pillar, its megalithic arches framing the swirling of the blue essence outside the circle.

  Unbound from the gargoyles, the blue essence fragmented into orbs that stretched and touched the ground. I sang a song of unity, of earth and air that formed living shape. Earth swirled upward, first in a few places, then dozens, then hundreds, maybe thousands of columns of fecund earth. It wasn’t creation, but re-creation, a binding of souls to the material world, to become what they once were.

  The columns of earth coalesced, sprouting limbs and heads. Bodies formed, sunburned skins tattooed with lines and circles of blue woad. Clear-eyed men and strong-faced women stared at me through the arches, the blue essence settling within them. They raised their arms, raised high shields and spears and swords, and let out a great shout that echoed with a resounding roar. The humans of Faerie stood restored, alive and unbowed.

  A man entered the ring, stout with a drape of cloth over his shoulder belted at the waist. He planted his spear on the ground between us, his deep eyes wary beneath a wide brow pitted with blue swirls.

  “My lord has magicked his face, but I still see his nature,” he said.

  “Good to see you, too, Virgil,” I said.

  He cocked his head. “Does my lord not recognize me?”

  “I am no one’s lord now, Cruth. Call me Connor,” I said.

  His gaze went to my sword, considering, probably wondering how someone holding such a weapon could not be a lord in his world. We weren’t in his world anymore, though. I was Connor now.

  “We have waited as you asked,” he said.

  My memory flashed back a century, to a wide plain filled with men and women marching. I rememb
ered fearing that the humans would be helpless in the face of what was to come, powerless against the onslaught of Maeve’s madness, armed with little more than their courage. I remembered thinking I did not want to see them die for a madwoman’s lust for power. I remembered thinking I could save them, protect them from her gaze, hiding their life force in gargoyle-shaped stone. I was wrong. I delayed their fate. The Wheel of the World turns as It will, no matter the hopes of men and women.

  “The battle is to be joined, Cruth. I don’t know if I can stop the High Queen’s slaughter. I cannot save anyone, but I can give you a chance to save yourself,” I said.

  “The People of the Way have never doubted your heart,” he said.

  “You are in a place other than you knew. The humans here are confused. They have great power, but I do not think they will use it against the People of the Way. I need you to keep them from this henge until the matter is settled. I will try to save as many as I can. Will the People of the Way lend me their courage?”

  He clenched his fist. “We shall be as bones, bones of the earth, steadfast and eternal,” he said.

  “I promise I will try,” I said.

  “We hear and hope,” he said.

  Cruth withdrew from the henge, shouting to his people. They picked up his call, their voices rising in answer, beating spears against rough shields. The call spread out from the henge, and as one the humans of Faerie marched, their faces set with determination and wonder as National Guard tanks appeared in the surrounding streets. They set their backs to me and their spears to the ground, chanting a war cry of protection. I hoped too many of them didn’t get shot.

  As they receded down the hill, a gap among them traveled up through the crowd, like a ship cutting a wave through turbulent seas. Three people appeared in the path, walking side by side. I smiled with gratitude and regret as Dylan, Callin, and Murdock entered the stone circle.

  “You didn’t have to come, Dylan,” I said.

  He shrugged, no longer wearing the Rand glamour but still in his uniform. “I didn’t have to do a lot of things, Con, but I always had your back.”