Elated, I opened my eyes. Darkness consumed my arm and permeated the spear. It reached for the column with a gnawing hunger. Above, the victory monument swayed violently and rebounded. Essence and darkness twisted it into a sinuous line of granite dancing in the air. With an ear-piercing screech, it pulled from its foundation, and the column of light sucked it in.
The column shrank. Enough. It was enough. I took a deep breath and willed the darkness to withdraw. It raged up my arm, swelling into a restless mass in my head again. It slammed against the back of my skull, and I went airborne. I landed on my back and gazed up at the sky. With a loud screech, the column contracted, stretched into the shape of a pillar, and collapsed.
Joe floated above me, the rising sun glistening gold on the edges of his wings. He circled, a reflective expression on his face. “I think I need to change my loincloth,” he said.
Things shifted in my body. More cracked ribs, probably a broken one or two; aching joints; a soreness in my lower back, probably was a damaged kidney; and every square inch of my skin felt abraded. My forearm throbbed with heat. Vapor wisped over the silver filigree. The metal darkened and sank into my arm, leaving behind a faint indigo ghost image of the swirling pattern. I flexed my fingers, my skin tight on a smooth pink hand.
At the bottom of the hill near Beacon Street, the inert body of a dream mare lay on its side, the light gone out of it. Next to it, unmoving Danann security agents stood in a circle facing outward. Between them, I caught glimpses of a red figure on the ground. My sense of elation fell. Only a Danann honor guard stood like that. Ceridwen hadn’t made it.
“They died coming through the veil,” Joe said softly in my ear.
Sadness and small guilt swept through me. If I had not been so cocky years ago, Vize would have been in custody, and Ceridwen would not have died. She had fought to protect a place she had no reason to protect, people she didn’t know, following orders from a High Queen who had betrayed her. At least she knew she had been duped. I would make sure everyone heard what she told me at the end. We might not have liked each other, but Ceridwen deserved to be honored. I walked down the hill to pay my respects.
Except for a lack of essence, the dream mare appeared asleep, crouched on her haunches with her long neck stretched out on the ground. One of her eyes was open, a milky white glaze. She had had some kind of essence reaction. The veil or the Taint, or probably both, killed her.
As I came around the horse’s body, Ceridwen became visible. The honor guard kept a distance of several feet. Her body had been arranged on the ground to await transport. She lay on her back with her armor and helm on. Someone had placed a sword on her, blade down, and wrapped her hands on the hilt.
I stopped. Beyond the honor guard, more people gathered, Danann security agents, and several Guild personnel. A small group surrounded Briallen, her body rigid with emotion. She must have sensed me because she turned and held out her hand. My stomach lurched at the look on her face. I forced myself to move, denial warring with realization as I approached. I took Briallen’s hand and folded my arms around her. She wasn’t crying, but the grief radiating off her was palpable.
I held her tightly against my chest as I stared down at Dylan’s dead body.
37
I leaned against the door of the room high in an isolated tower of the Guildhouse. The domed chamber had a complex truss design reminiscent of Renaissance architecture applied with druidic sensibilities. Thick oak beams crisscrossed the ceiling and reached to the floor. A Palladian window filled an entire wall with an expansive view to the east. The stained glass along the frame of the window was done in multicolored geometric shapes, some clean, clear colors, some rich opalescents. The center pane had a stunning image of an oak grove in bloom, complete with representations of mistletoe hanging among the leaves. Louis Comfort Tiffany had made the window himself under a direct commission of the Seelie Court. I couldn’t image what its value was.
I rolled the sphere in my hands, admiring the craftsmanship. The knotwork of the outer shell patterned with meticulous fine lines to resemble a flat, braided rope. The interior orb moved freely with a faint sound as I spun it with my finger. The precise incisions of ogham script on the orb appeared and disappeared beneath the knots as it moved, the light catching the various aphorisms and poetic triads. I used to think the words were sentimental, in a derisive sense. It’s funny how a charged emotional state can transform something maudlin into something profound.
Dylan’s body lay shrouded on the funeral bier draped in a ceremonial robe, the indigo and gold Celtic weave of its hem pooling on the floor. The brilliant white cloth was placed so that three vibrant yellow suns with flaming red borders rested on his chest. His face looked handsome in repose, no indication of what he might have felt when he died. Leaving a good-looking corpse fit his style.
I waited in the dim predawn silence. A small fluctuation of essence in my chest prompted me to look up from the sphere. The window brightened as dawn arrived, the sun’s essence seeping into the sky in feathery touches. In the clear space above the grove image, the sun appeared in full, perched on the horizon. Light bathed the room, Dylan’s shroud a sudden field of colors reflected from the stained glass.
“It would serve you right if I walked out the door right now,” I said.
I didn’t mean it. Not really. I moved to the bier and held the sphere over Dylan’s face. The sun warmed the sphere, and it awakened. I lowered it gently to his forehead as the inner orb began to spin on its own. Faster and faster it turned, glowing with a soft white light. Essence welled out of the spaces of the knotwork and overflowed onto my hand, spilling out warm and soothing, running down Dylan’s face. The shroud glowed as essence ran under it, the shape of his body burning under the cloth. The orb slowed as the light faded, then stopped. I stepped back.
The cocoon of light faded as Dylan’s body absorbed the phosphorescent glow. Shafts of sunlight crisscrossed the room, a hushed, reverent silence of light. The shroud moved, a subtle shift across the sun emblems.
Dylan gasped, lurching into a seated position. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and lowered him back down. With his eyes focused on the ceiling, he took deep, ragged breaths, filling his body with air and essence. His breathing slowed, becoming controlled and normal. He closed his eyes.
I crossed my arms and waited. He opened his eyes again and smiled. As angry as I was, I couldn’t help smiling back. It’s something uncontrollable after you think someone is dead.
“You’re an asshole,” I said.
His smiled broadened. He started laughing, which led to coughing, and he sat up to clear his throat. Eyes tearing from the effort, he shook his head, still smiling. “That’s not the welcome back I was expecting,” he said.
I tossed him the sphere. “I am so angry with you right now. We thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. Then I get home and that thing is glowing in my study.”
He looked sheepish. “I was going to tell you, but things got complicated.”
I snorted. “Complicated? More complicated than ‘oh, by the way, hang on to my soul for me, I might need it?’ That’s crazy, Dylan. I could have thrown that thing out.”
He tilted his head down. “But you didn’t. I had faith you wouldn’t, or I would have come back for it.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re lucky I called Briallen instead of using it for a night-light.”
He spun the orb and held it straight out so I could read an ogham script: Life is a series of trust moments.
“Danu’s blood, as you like to say, Dyl. That’s some freakin’ trust.”
“And not misplaced, obviously,” he said.
“You have a very angry Auntie Bree, by the way.”
He nodded, working the stiffness out of his jaw. “She’ll understand. She never stays mad at me for long.”
“Lucky you.”
He stretched and yawned. “Wow. Being dead really knots up the muscles.”
“You shou
ld get as much rest as you can. The Guild is in an uproar. They’re going to be all over you about what happened.”
He grimaced. “Actually, Con, I don’t want anyone to know I’m alive.”
That took me off guard. “Why not?”
He gave me a sly look. “Believe it or not, I was planning on dying in a couple of weeks. This whole scenario saves me the trouble.”
Realization dawned. “The Black Ops job.”
“Yep. Dead’s always the perfect cover.”
“Please tell me I don’t have to keep that a secret from Briallen,” I said.
“Oh, no. She knew my plans. She’ll agree this is perfect. I mean, after she stops being mad at me for dying for real. Sort of,” he said.
I shook my head, laughing softly. “Gods, Dyl, we lead crazy-ass lives, you know that?”
He nodded, amused, too. “Yeah, we do. You should go before anyone else comes in. I don’t have much time to slip out of here.”
I held my hand out. “Good luck.” We shook. On impulse, I pulled him up and gave him a hug. “Don’t do that again.”
“I’ll try not to,” he said in my ear.
I left him sitting on his funeral bier, head tilted back to catch the warmth of the sun. Outside the room, Meryl waited on a bench in the corridor, empty except for two Danann agents standing honor guard. She looked curious as she hugged me. “You’re oddly happy for someone visiting a deceased friend.”
I wrapped her under my arm as we walked to the elevator. “I can’t believe what a jerk I used to be.”
“You could have just asked me,” she said.
“But I’ve gotten better, right?”
She rocked her head from side to side. “Well, let’s say things look promising.”
“But I’m much better, right?”
She looked at me from under a head of ice blue hair. “Buy me the lobster you owe me, and we’ll talk.”
* * * *
I huddled in my jacket against the late-night cold. Winter was coming on strong. I burped lobster as I crossed the Old Northern Avenue bridge into the Weird. The lone police car at the checkpoint had turned into three. After what happened on the Common, the city dropped all pretense of calling it a safety measure for everyone. The entire neighborhood was closed off. Jersey barriers were thrown down everywhere to control traffic in and out, not just on the bridges. It wasn’t martial law, but it was only a matter of time before they figured out the legal niceties.
I turned onto Sleeper Street. The thing I liked about my street was that it wasn’t filled with late-night partiers unless something was going on in my own building. The thing I didn’t like was that it wasn’t filled with late-night partiers and was creepy and desolate late at night.
A flutter of essence washed over me, and my fragmented body shield kicked on. Someone casting a sensing spell. It wasn’t nasty or threatening. I stopped. If whoever had cast it didn’t know exactly where I lived, I didn’t need them to see me enter my building. I scanned the street. The warehouse across from my building had garage doors that spent a lot of time closed. At the far end of the block, someone lingered in the darkness of a recessed loading bay. I opened my sensing ability again to do my own scouting and got the surprise of the day. The essence wasn’t normal, as if anything in the Weird was normal. Between the seething anger of the people who lived down here and the damned Taint, the last thing we needed was the Dead of TirNaNog roaming around.
A tall, cloaked woman stepped into view under a street-light. Neither of us moved, but stared at each other for a long moment. She beckoned me closer. I joined her under the pool of light, her essence resonating with the feel of TirNaNog.
“You aren’t surprised to see me,” she said.
I shrugged. “You have no idea how much nothing surprises me anymore, Ceridwen.”
She laughed, low and comfortable. “I’m Dead.”
I nodded. “I can feel that. Why are you here?”
“The Way was closed,” she said.
“Ah. At least you said closed and not gone. I’m not sure if TirNaNog was destroyed.”
She nodded. “A fair concern. I choose not to believe it is gone. I think I would feel it. As I did not believe Faerie was gone when I lived, I do not believe TirNaNog is gone now that I’m Dead.”
“You Dead people are so optimistic.”
She laughed, an oddly pleasant sound under the circumstances. “Under different circumstances, I think I might have liked you, Druid macGrey.”
I nodded in courtesy. “I think we would have found something to talk about.”
She worried her hands together and removed a ring. “I want you to have this.”
I tilted it toward the light. It was an ornate gold band set with a large carnelian. “This isn’t necessary.”
She smiled, turned slowly on her heel, and walked away. “It will be. Tell no one I gave it to you. Remember we have a deal.”
She disappeared into the darkness. I tossed the ring in the air and caught it overhand. As I slipped it in my pocket, I hoped I didn’t regret words said in anger.
I backtracked to my apartment. The Dead who had made it into Boston through the veil found themselves in the same dilemma as Ceridwen. They couldn’t get back and had no place to go. Naturally, they were gravitating to the Weird.
A darkness was gathering around me. I felt it as palpably as I felt Ceridwen’s ring in my pocket. The dark mass in my head had an awareness or at least something very close to it. I didn’t know anymore if I was responding to it or it was responding to me. Like the spear. For one brief moment, it became a fierce white thing in my head, but it felt like something more, something important, yet mutable. I could believe it was a sliver of the Wheel, or at least Its instrument. And I, in turn, had been the spear’s instrument before it vanished in the collapse of the veil.
And so was Bergin Vize. Like I was bonded, so he had been for a brief time. All this time, I’d thought he had done something to destroy my abilities, but now it seemed that whatever happened had destroyed his, too. Whether he’d caused it or not was still a question, but the fact remained that our paths kept crossing. Whether that was his doing or the Wheel’s didn’t matter. It just was. And would be again. Especially now that he was loose in Boston.
I wake up every day thinking about the past, the things I remember and the things I don’t. Everything is there, just on the edge of my thoughts, things I’ve said or done. People I’ve loved or killed. Actions and events reach out to the present and change the future. All there, waiting their turn on the Wheel. Memories lurk in dark recesses. Old friends become new again. Dead things are reborn, marching forward out of the past into the future, standing tall and sure, refusing to lie down and rest, unfallen dead things that claim a piece of the Wheel for themselves, claim a piece of me. Where they lead, only the Wheel knows, and It reveals Itself with grudging hints, confusing metaphors, and inevitability.
And the dark mass in my head complicated everything. It kept me out of the Guild. It kept me from remembering. I thought it was killing me. Which might be true, but what also was true was that without it, I would have died a few times recently. What happened in TirNaNog changed it. I felt it. It was time to try again to figure out what the hell it was. I had exhausted my resources. Neither Briallen, Nigel, nor Gillen Yor had been able to figure it out. Maybe it was time to start looking for answers in unlikely places.
Joe popped in, humming with a particularly proud and smug look on his face.
“I take it the mission was a success?” I asked.
He snapped his fingers. “It was a cinch.”
“And no one saw you?”
He thumped his chest. “No one sees a flit when he doesn’t want to be seen.”
I’d worked with Keeva long enough to fake her handwriting to the casual eye. I couldn’t wait to see what happened when her boyfriend showed up at the Guildhouse board of directors meeting tomorrow wearing the good-luck gift “she” had left in his office. The only downside
was I wouldn’t see Ryan macGoren’s face when he realized he was proudly wearing an expensive gold torc that had been stolen from the New York Met.
I smirked. “Good man. I’d say this calls for a drink.”
He grinned back. “No port.”
It’s been a century since the peoples and magic of the Faerie realms mysteriously appeared in our world, an event known historically as Convergence. Humanity has learned to coexist with fairies and elves, but sometimes it seems Convergence has only brought new breeds of criminals—and new ways to fight them.
MEET LAURA BLACKSTONE
In Washington, D.C., Laura Blackstone is the public relations director for the Fey Guild. Janice Crawford is a druid who helps out when the D.C. SWAT team needs magical backup. Mariel Tate is a lead investigator for an international intelligence agency. But what most people don’t know is that they are all the same woman.
Laura has been juggling different identities for years, using her ability to disguise herself with magical glamours to gather intelligence. Now, as “Laura” puts together publicity for a special fey exhibition at the National Archives, “Janice” is almost killed in a drug bust gone bad . . . and “Mariel” discovers a possible connection between the drug raid and threats against the opening of the exhibition.
Laura’s different worlds are about to collide, and if she can’t keep it together, she’ll have more to worry about than having to retire an identity. She may lose her life.
Look for the first Laura Blackstone novel
SKIN DEEP by Mark Del Franco
Coming in August 2009 from Ace Books
Unfallen Dead Page 30
