Unfallen Dead cg-3

by Mark Del Franco

  The phosphorescence bulged from the walls. The ceiling spot sagged, grew thick and bulbous, and dropped to the floor in a gelatinous ball. The whispering became ragged and gasping as the sour green essence took on more substance. Blunt appendages sprouted from them, stretching out to test the air like the night of my alley run.

  The essence emitted a strange vibration. The various masses gathered, spun, and swirled, shaping themselves into bodies. A face appeared in one, long and haughty, pressing toward me. It shook and sharp wings swept up out of the gelatinous mass. More coalesced, bodies shaping into human form, druid and human and fairy.

  This was no time to be helplessly bound to a wall. “Dylan! I could use your help here!”

  More than a dozen figures ranged around me, laughing at the feeble sound of my voice. I had met some of them before-the Inverni from the night of my alley run, the druid from the subway tracks, and the vanished man on the bridge on the night of my meeting with Ceridwen.

  “Are you remembering?” a Danann fairy said, his voice echoing among the others. A woman stepped closer, blond, angry, white sparks in her eyes. Her hand burned on my cheek. “Do you remember the pain you’ve given?”

  A druid pressed an index finger into my side, sending a shock through me. “Do you fear it?”

  They moved in, their faces livid, eyes malevolent. Their essences electrified my skin. My heart raced, the binding spell tightening as I tried to pull away. Hands thrust forward, plunging into my body, and I screamed.

  “Do you repent?” said the Inverni. He pushed his hand into my face. It seared pain into my skin. I knew him then, his essence familiar as it violated mine. He was from the ferry. They all were. I knew them all, remembered them, their body signatures stamped on my memory. The attack on the Pride Wind, the group that almost killed me and Dylan. My dead had come calling.

  “I regret nothing,” I shouted through the pain. “Nothing!”

  “Then suffer our pain through the night,” a druid said.

  The Inverni pressed harder. I screamed as his hand sank into my head. They closed around him, all of them, hands clawing at my flesh, burrowing into muscle and bone and sending my body into convulsions. The dark mass in my mind spiked and somehow I screamed louder than I already was doing. Their expressions changed, became perplexed, then fearful.

  The Inverni screamed, too. The others tried to pull away, but something dark trailed out of my skin, like a thick, curling mist. They screamed, all of them at once, a howling of rage and horror. The binding spell seared my flesh, but darkness wrapped the ribbons, and they sloughed off like char. Darkness filled my vision, blotting out everything.

  I slumped to my knees, hearing screams, feeling essence pour into me as the mist snared the remaining figures. They died again. But this time, they didn’t just die. This time their essences disintegrated, the dark mist tearing them to shreds, rending them to shards of light that had no integrity, no hope of incorporating into whoever they were. The mist absorbed it, sucking in the light, pulling the essence into my body.

  I fell forward, gagging, chaotic images flooding my brain, places and faces I knew I’d never seen. I blacked out. At least I think I did. My body hung suspended in a nothingness, not the dark mist, but a blackness, silent and deep. Dying screams echoed in the nothingness, ringing hollowly in my ears.

  Someone called my name from far off. The screams faded away. I drifted in the blackness, numb with the silence. I heard my name again, louder. White light filled my mind, flooding me in a wash of soothing essence. I opened my eyes. Dylan knelt over me, his face frightened even as he radiated healing essence over me. “Connor? Can you hear me?”

  The mist dissipated. I found my voice. “I’m okay.”

  He gave a ragged sigh as he pulled me to his chest. “Danu, you don’t look okay. What the hell happened? Where’s Meryl?”

  His warmth enveloped me, his essence wrapping me in a cocoon of relief. The fog lifted from my mind. I sat forward, breaking his embrace. “We have to find her.”

  Blood rushed to my head as Dylan helped me up. I leaned against the wall to steady myself, feeling the stone flow onto my fingers. My skin felt alive, every nerve ending firing. I breathed deeply.

  “You were screaming,” he said.

  Dylan’s essence illuminated the corridor. No evidence of my attackers remained. “I killed them again, Dylan. The ones from that day. They came for me, and I killed them again.”

  He brought his hand to my chin, tilting my face from side to side. “You had smoke coming out of your eyes. Dark smoke like nothing I’ve ever seen. It had no essence, like it wasn’t even there.”

  My face felt the memory of it, something I recognized but didn’t understand. “The thing in my head came out. It’s still in me, though. I can feel it more than ever. It feels bigger. I think it’s growing.”

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me back the way we had come. “We have to get you to Gillen Yor.”

  I pulled away. “No! Powell’s going to kill her, Dylan. I can’t let that happen.”

  He looked about to argue, then nodded with a sad smile. “I know. Whatever’s happening to you, Con, you’re still who you are. Let’s go.”

  We passed a section of hallway with high concentrations of essence. Burn marks scorched the walls. An intricate web of binding spells hung in tatters, already fading. “They fought here.”

  Anxiety settled over me as I sensed the essence trail. They moved together, but Meryl’s signature was faint while Powell’s blazed.

  “This was part of her plan somehow,” Dylan said behind me. “There are too many binding spells. She must have set them a while ago.”

  The hallway ended at a spiral staircase of stone. “Powell waited ten years for this. She’s a contingency planner. She saved Meryl for last so Viten could kill his killer,” I said over my shoulder.

  I took out my cell phone. No signal. We were too deep underground. The stair wound about its central axis, turning over and over, progress that felt like a standstill. A signal bar flickered into view on my screen. I called Murdock, but the connection broke. The steps vibrated under our feet with the dull rumble of a subway train. We reached the top, an incongruous metal door with a modern spring bar. It popped open into the decrepit remains of an ancient bathroom.

  A glamour spell snapped in place behind us as we left the room, hiding the door behind a wall of dirty tiles. I recognized the narrow platform of Arlington Street Station, two blocks away from the Guildhouse. My cell signal stabilized, and I called Murdock again.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m on the Common. The place is a zoo,” he said.

  “Powell’s escaped. She’s got Meryl, and I think they’re headed for the fairy ring. Can you get up there?”

  “I’m not far. We have a command post at the monument.”

  “Meet you there.” I disconnected.

  A train arrived as we reached the stairs. A throng of fey disembarked, pushing to the exits with the excitement of children. Dylan and I shoved our way up the steps, fighting elbows and wings and nasty glares. We exited to the corner of Arlington and Boylston.

  Police guarded the entrance gates of the Public Garden, blocking everyone from entering. The streets were mobbed. We joined the crowd heading for the Common, hundreds of people of every conceivable species of fey imaginable.

  At the end of the block, the Common glowed with more radiant essence. The light burned brightest through the bare limbs of the trees where the land sloped up to the towering Civil War monument and the fairy hill beyond it. Fairies of all kinds filled the sky, their wings flaming with essence as they swooped and swirled in dance. As we ran down the lane that passed the bandstand, the crowd swelled, slowing down as more people flooded into the park. Everyone wanted to be on the hill.

  I stopped, amazed. An inverted funnel of misty gray light twisted into the sky, long wisps of the Taint revolving around it.

  Dylan spoke in my ear with awe a
nd wonder in his voice. “It’s really opening, Connor. The veil is opening.”

  I pushed ahead. “That thing better be exit only.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Thousands of laughing and shouting people packed the blocked-off streets around the Common. Groups gathered and merged with a confusion of harps and lutes, drums, horns, and electric guitars on portable amps. Anything that could make a noise, someone banged, blew, or strummed-elven death dirges clashing with Irish bands playing tympani punk, dwarven horns blasting against Gaelic windpipes against police whistles and megaphones-even a mariachi band on the baseball diamond. Fey and human alike danced and cheered, humans in Halloween costumes, fey in the traditional garb of their clans.

  On the lower end of the Common, police manned barricades separating the open field from the rise of the hill where the Civil War monument and fairy ring stood. Dylan showed his Guild badge to an officer to get us into a cordoned-off emergency path that wound its way through the crowds. Another security perimeter was set up around the monument at the top of the hill. Police, fire, and EMT communications units ranged in the rough circle, creating an island of relative calm in a sea of chaos. Marble statues representing war and peace stared down from the war monument’s pedestal in mute testament to the fact that things hardly ever truly change.

  The essence within the fairy ring churned, a concentration more dense than the night Dylan and I argued. It was so intense, the unaided eye could see it. I didn’t need a sensing ability to see it. No one did.

  Murdock waited near a temporary fence that was yet another barricade to the fairy ring. His body shield shimmered over his long camel-hair overcoat, the hardened crimson essence providing a level of safety I could only dream about. With all the colliding essence on the hill, any fey who noticed a body shield on a human probably dismissed it as a trick of the light. I didn’t like the grim look on his face. “They went in about ten minutes ago,” he said without waiting to be asked.

  My chest tightened at the word “they.” I gripped the metal fencing and stared into the fairy ring. “Was Meryl all right?”

  He cocked his head to listen to something on his radio before answering. “I didn’t see her myself. I’m told she was mobile but dazed-looking. Powell had a doctored Guild badge that got them into the inner perimeter. With all the Guild types in there, no one thought anything was wrong. They were last seen near the edge of that column of light. There was a bright flash, and they vanished.”

  “I want to get in there,” I said. Murdock didn’t hesitate. Dylan and I followed him to a break in the barricade, and between their two official passes, no one tried to stop us.

  Researchers and politicians roamed the restricted area around the fairy ring. The politicians were there for the photo op and the privilege of saying they could get in because someone thought they were someone important. The researchers were primarily fey, primarily from the Guild. Briallen and Nigel worked in separate groups, which was no surprise. Any other time, I would have loved to hear them argue back and forth about what was happening.

  Flits flew around the thick essence like multicolored moths to a flame. Higher up in the air, fairies from the larger clans pressed closer. Fairies were air folk. Airborne essence attracted them and fed their essence-manipulating abilities. Drawn by the concentration of essence, the Taint had gravitated to the funnel, ambient wisps of the control spell that deepened in color as they collided and weaved together. A pressure headache sprang up behind my eyes. If the dark mass in my head didn’t like concentrated essence or the Taint, it definitely didn’t like the two of them together.

  Murdock pointed to a spot that looked no different from the rest of the funnel. “This is where they went in.”

  Shapes moved within the fog, faint impressions of bodies and faces. The funnel essence radiated a distinctive resonance unlike any I knew. I touched it and found not a misty vapor but a slightly repulsive texture like cool, pliant skin. I pushed, and it dimpled in under the pressure, not separating or tearing.

  Briallen broke away from her group. She wore a wireless headset, an incongruity for her that I could not stop staring at. Briallen rejected most technotoys. She could. Lots of technology replicates what she can do with her own innate abilities. “It’s happening, Connor. The veil between worlds is thinning. Tara is secure, but there’s rioting at Stonehenge and Carnac.”

  “There’s always rioting at Stonehenge,” Dylan muttered. He trailed along the ring, sparking little cantrips into the mist, fascination gleaming in his eyes.

  “Did you see what happened with Meryl?” I asked.

  Briallen stared up at the mist. “She had a binding spell on her. I was too far away to do anything. What I want to know is how the hell they went through.”

  “A silver branch,” I said. “At least one of the items from the Met robbery was the real deal.”

  Briallen had a bemused expression. “Before Convergence, we used to take things like that for granted. If the conditions were right, you could even pass through a portal into Faerie or TirNaNog or the Glass Isle without a silver branch. Part of me is thrilled the veil has thinned, and part of me is terrified.”

  Dozens of flits popped into view, chattering excitedly as they swarmed around the fog. Briallen pause to listen in on her headset. “Word has spread. We’ll probably see more flits.”

  Dylan returned from his circuit of the ring. “The Taint’s amplifying the veil.”

  Briallen nodded. “That’s what I thought. What I don’t know is if people go through the veil, what effect the Taint will have on them. In the old days, people with unfinished business came back from TirNaNog, and they weren’t very nice about it.”

  Something high up within the veil pressed outward and formed a dull gray lump on the swirling surface. The swelling receded, bulged again, and took on shape. The veil stretched as someone pushed against from the other side, the surface lightening from expansion until it was transparent enough to see a Danann fairy in an old-style court tunic. He struggled against the gray essence, pushing farther out, tendrils of mist elongating until they snapped with a silent flicker of light. He tumbled and caught air on long, translucent wings, hovering in confusion above our upturned faces. Shock registered on his face at the sight of the surrounding buildings. If the dated-ness of his clothes meant anything, he had never seen structures so tall. He muttered something in Old Irish that translated roughly as “Where the hell am I?”

  He flew toward downtown.

  “That was a dead guy?” Murdock asked.

  “It depends on your definition of dead,” Dylan said.

  I reached for the spot where the fairy had exited, but the surface closed before I could touch it. Another bulge formed and dissipated near my head, and I imagined someone on the other side trying the same thing I was. A hand rested on my shoulder. Briallen looking at me with shared concern. “She knows how to handle herself.”

  “This is my fault,” I said.

  “Don’t start that again.” Briallen brushed her hand along the side of my head.

  I jerked away. “Stop that.”

  Annoyance flickered across her face, but she didn’t remove her hand. “I was only going to check if you were all right.”

  “Don’t change the subject to the thing in my head,” I said.

  “I will if you stop ignoring that something’s not right. I can feel it.”

  I met her gaze. “Something happened, Briallen, and it changed. I don’t need you to tell me it’s growing.”

  She dropped the hand. “You’re right. And you shouldn’t be here. Between the Taint and this veil opening, I’m worried.”

  I stepped away from her. “I’m sorry, Briallen. I got Meryl into this. I can’t leave.”

  “I don’t know whether to be proud to hear you say that or throw you over my knee,” she said. Her expression changed abruptly, and she held a hand against her earpiece. She glanced up at me as she listened intently. “A mist has formed at the grove.”

  Sh
e didn’t have to tell me what grove. Boston druids and druidesses met in an oak grove on Telegraph Hill down in Southie. “I’m not surprised, I guess. There’s a lot of residual Taint down there.”

  She peered into the distance as if she were looking through the surrounding city to the ring of oak trees. “We stationed people there, in case, but…” Her voice trailed away.

  “No one very powerful, right?”

  She surveyed the remaining fey. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid?”

  I grinned. “Do you really have to ask?”

  Her hand found my cheek again, only this time in a warm caress. “She’ll be fine. If there’s one thing Meryl does, it’s the unexpected.”

  Without another word, she hurried down the hill to a nearby black car.

  Dylan’s gaze went up over my shoulder. “We’ve got company.”

  “Looks more like incoming,” Murdock said.

  Above the crowd on the Common, airborne fey scattered from a growing cloud of light. The light resolved into rank upon rank of Danann security agents, several hundred, all in black, their chrome helmets reflecting their innate essence. Front and center, a figure burned with hot golden essence.

  “That’s Ceridwen,” I said. She was the last person I wanted to see. If she hadn’t been so paranoid, Meryl would have been at her desk and made sure Powell was in a secure room. As if to draw even more attention to herself, she had the spear with her. I had a lightbulb moment. “Dylan, give me Powell’s soul stone.”

  He hesitated. “Why?”

  I didn’t want to tell him. If he didn’t like the idea, it wouldn’t work without the stone. “I need it for leverage.”

  He looked suspicious. “Leverage with whom?”

  Ceridwen would arrive in a moment. I didn’t have time to argue. “Dylan, you wanted me to trust you. I’m asking you to do the same. If you don’t want Ceridwen to know you gave it to me, you need to give me Powell’s soul stone right now.”