Unperfect Souls (38 page)

Not a flicker of awareness. I hugged her to my chest and rocked her. “Come on, Meryl. Wake up.”

I stroked her face. Her skin was hard and cold. She lay in my arms, deadweight. I sensed nothing from her at all. Whatever made Meryl Meryl was gone. I lowered her to the ground. Eorla’s essence glowed like an emerald star as Rand held her, but her head fell back slack. She lay still and insensate in his arms. He stared at me, stricken.

The Weird was not their home. The solitaries were not their people. Vize was not their problem. Or Moira. They could have walked away. They had wanted to help. They wanted to help me. But I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t stop the madness. I was useless and now they were—I didn’t know what they were. Mindless. Brain-dead. I didn’t know.

I lifted my head at the sound of a tank moving at the end of the Avenue. It shifted into place, its gun turret rotating toward us. Another moved forward. More National Guardsmen arrived through the side alleys. They pointed their guns at us.

I rose to my feet. “Stay with her, Joe.”

Agitated, he whirled around me. “What are you doing?”

I thrust my hand at him, and he somersaulted out of reach. “Just stay with her and don’t argue,” I said.

I walked toward the waiting tanks and soldiers, the pain in my head tearing at my mind. Essence light flared on the bridge—powerful Danann and Teutonic body signatures. The power players. The elite. The ones who played games while innocent people died. Something broke inside me, and I shouted in rage.

The darkness answered.

My head exploded with a visceral pain. My vision blurred and faded away into a relentless black field. Essence exploded everywhere into my awareness, every body signature, every nuance, and every mote blazed around me against a black, hungry night. The ambient essence of the Weird crackled and flickered, buildings a pearlescent white, the street a rainbow oil slick of fractured color. Human soldiers moved like soft shadows of azure against the dead null zones of their tanks and trucks. The bridge became defined by its negative space, its steel beams a nothingness of essence that formed a cage for the fey who waited there—blue-white Dananns, amber brownies, the green streak of elves, and yellows and whites and everything between.

The Guild. The Consortium. Safe in the steel nest of the bridge. Safe from the essence-fire of the rampaging solitaries and the Dead. Safe from the collateral damage of their own agents firing on innocent bystanders. Safe from the tanks and the guns and the soldiers prepared to attack on their orders. Safe from the ramifications of their own decisions.

The dark mass surged within me, feeding my anger and need. I let it. I wanted it. I didn’t care anymore about what it could do or not do. My chest ached as hot spikes of shadow pierced my skin. Darkness blossomed around me like a pall of smoke. I stalked toward the bridge, toward the waiting tanks and soldiers.

The faint echo of gunfire sounded as if from far, far away. Pinpricks of red-white lights shot toward me, then sparkled and vanished in the darkness. Humans scattered away from me as I approached, their faint blue body signatures fleeing into the distance. The shadows extending from my skin shuddered and coiled, enormous waves pressing against the null void of the tanks. They scattered like leaves before me, the shadows flinging them aside like the nothingness they were.

Essence flared ahead, delicious strikes of light that pulsated in the darkness only to evaporate as they neared me. I savored them, tasted the hot, burning flavor through all my senses, a rush of ecstasy coursing through me as I consumed them. The body signatures on the bridge shifted in place, uncertain hoverings of fear and confusion that heightened my desire. Fear was there. Delicious fear. I wanted them. I wanted them all.

Darkness split my forehead like a blade. A nightness blossomed out of me, long ribbons of it unfurling and slithering in and out of the dull shape of the bridge, wrapping itself around the beams and tension cabling. The body signatures retreated, then stopped moving as the darkness out-paced them to the other end of the bridge. They huddled in the center. Trapped. I had them trapped together, wrapped in an embrace of the darkness.

My mind clenched. The thing in my mind clenched. The long ribbons flexed and yanked. The bridge shuddered and twisted as I pulled, bending and peeling it open like a tangled knot of metal. The channel waters beneath it teemed with shots of essence, water fey and sea creatures fleeing the strands of darkness that waved over them. I pulled at the darkness as it pulled at me.

I reached the bridge. The fey who cowered there surrounded themselves with a shield barrier, thick and powerful. My shadows ripped at it, shredding it layer by layer the closer I got. Their fear was palpable now, delicious and sweet. Satisfaction coursed through me, a deep pleasure that for once the powerful and the strong felt the profound helplessness of the weak and desperate. I wanted them to know what they had done to the Dead and the solitaries. I wanted them to feel the burn of flames tearing through the Weird, the rending of flesh from blades and bullets. I wanted them to know what they had done to us, to all of us. To me. To Meryl.

The darkness—my darkness—slithered among them, snaring their essence, siphoning their power. I moved without thought, watching their lights fade one by one. As the essence around me diminished, another darkness appeared in its midst. Something moved in my vision, something dark and familiar. Insignificant in size, weak in force, but nevertheless there. It recoiled from me and my darkness danced and swirled around it, resisting its presence.

Realization pushed itself into my hunger. Another darkness. Another window into this nameless other that I was setting free. Another mark of everything that had gone wrong since that day we fought and he destroyed my abilities as he tried to destroy the world.

Vize.

Rage rose higher within me. He would not hide among the powerful fey. He would not escape by claiming safe harbor. I wasn’t going to let him. I forced the darkness out of me, forced it toward the dark thing in front of me.

I touched his darkness and met the thing within myself.

My mind exploded in a cacophony of pain.

 

 

 

 

A high-pitched tone rang in my head. The dark mass smoldered inside me, a shrunken mote of heat. I lifted my face from hard, ribbed pavement. Pushing myself up, I tamped down my sensing ability to soften its raw sensitivity, but its physical aspects—the nerve endings in my nose and eyes—throbbed with pain.

A hard, cold wind swept up the channel. Black smoke rolled down Old Northern Avenue, obscuring the neighborhood. A tank lay on its side. Another was embedded in the wall of a building. The rest were spread along the sides of the street as if they had been dropped like toys from a child’s hand.

Behind me, dozens of bodies lay scattered on the bridge—fairies, brownies, dwarves, elves, druids—even solitaries and the Dead. Their essence guttered inside them like wind-torn candles.

I had done that.

My stomach clenched as I swept them with my sensing ability. Not dead. Depleted, but not dead. I hadn’t killed them. The fact that I could have and not given it a second thought when I released the darkness left me with a coldness that had nothing to do with the wind.

Bergin Vize stood, holding his scorched cloak closed with one hand. A burn mark across his knuckles left a red slash that set off the dead black ring he wore. He stared, wet and filthy, a faint light glittering in his eyes. “What were you hoping to accomplish by this?”

“Justice, Vize. And your death,” I said.

He murmured a long, low chuckle. “As usual, Grey, you make the rules to suit you, while claiming I transgress by doing so. How convenient for you. How just.”

I grabbed him by the front of his cloak. “Do you really think this is the moment to mock me, Vize? Do you have any idea what you caused here?”

He laughed, and I shoved him away. He had no idea and never would. People stirred around us. At the far end of the bridge, Ryan macGoren rose in the air on white-shot wings. He surveyed the damage with a blanched look on his face. For all his talk, I don’t think he had the guts to deal with the reality of being a Guildmaster. He floated down and landed beside Bastian Frye. As they approached me and Vize, Brokke disentangled himself from a pile of bodies and followed.

“You should have turned yourself in,” macGoren said. He had the gall to look annoyed.

“Really? Would that have stopped you from blowing up the power plant?” I said.

His glance slipped to Bastian Frye and away. “The Dead did that.”

I gave him the coldest smile I knew how. “Stick to that story, macGoren. I’m betting not enough people involved died despite your best efforts. They will talk.”

Danann security agents appeared in the sky above us and settled down beside macGoren. He gestured at Vize and me. “Take them into custody,” he said.

Frye held up his hand. “The Consortium has an interest in these men as well.”

MacGoren bowed his head with a smile. “My agents are here now, Bastian. We can sort it out later.”

Frye returned the smile. “I believe I am more than capable of handling two damaged fey folk.”

Brokke gazed off into the distance, a bemused smile on his face. “Wind’s changing.”

Frye shifted his eyes to the dwarf, then followed his line of sight to something behind me. The wind had swung around, pushing the smoke to the west away from the burning buildings. Down on the Avenue, a lone figure moved within the gray haze. With her head high and determined, Eorla strode out of the smoke, her essence shimmering a brilliant, pure evergreen. The wind shifted farther to the south, and the fire smoke retreated up the Avenue. More figures appeared behind Eorla, shadowed silhouettes in all shapes and sizes. Eorla threw her hands out as she continued walking, and she sent a surge of essence swirling through the air. A gale rushed off the channel and down the Avenue. The last of the smoke lifted and billowed away, revealing thousands of fey filling the street and the air above it. The Weird was on the march. The Dead and the solitaires, purged of the Taint, moved forward in united purpose.

Eorla reached the bridge and paused between me and Vize. She had changed on some fundamental level. Bright pinpoints of light glittered in her eyes, and her skin gleamed a translucent green. When I had first met her, I thought her power impressive. Now, she radiated essence like no one I had ever met.

“These men are under my protection,” she said.

A slight smile creased Frye’s lips, while macGoren shifted uncertainly on his feet. Frye bowed and swept his hand toward the far end of the bridge. “I have a car, Your Highness. Allow me to take charge of them.”

Eorla gave him a cold smile. “You mistake me, Bastian. I am granting them free passage. They are free to go by my authority.”

The smile slipped from his face. “Your Highness?”

She thrust her arm back. “Do you see what is behind me? That is failure, gentlemen, and I will no longer tolerate it. Do you see all those people? They are under my protection, too. All of them. Any transgression against them shall be a transgression against me.”

Frye came forward with his hand held out. “Your Highness, you are not yourself.”

White light filled Eorla’s eyes. “Step no closer, Bastian. I am more myself than ever. I claim these people. Do you hear me? Withdraw the Guild and Consortium forces and your human lackeys, or I will unleash a fury that will shake the thrones of the High Queen of Tara and the Elven King.”

“You would incite the Consortium to war against us?” macGoren asked.

Eorla shook her head. “No, Guildsman. Hear me, both of you, and hear me well. I send this message to High Queen Maeve and Donor Elfenkonig: You have failed. You face a new Court. Hear my words and know fear: Eorla Elvendottir shall not abide either of your courts any longer.”

MacGoren narrowed his eyes at her. “Be reasonable, Eorla. Look at that rabble. They can barely stand. Do you think you can withstand my forces?”

Eorla tucked her chin and glanced over her shoulder. “Like so many others, you underestimate me, Danann.

Look beyond what you see. Set your sights a little higher. I have.”

Someone appeared on the roof of the nearest building. As he stepped up on the high cornice of the building, Rand lifted a bow strung with flaming green elf-shot. One by one, other archers joined him, flanking him to either side along the roof. More appeared on other buildings until rooflines all around us bristled with elven soldiers wearing the house insignias of Kruge and Elvendottir.

“Cross me at your peril,” Eorla said. She pivoted on her heel and strode back into the Weird. Vize didn’t hesitate to follow. I stared at macGoren, flanked by his security agents. True shock and fear showed in his eyes. There was nothing left to say. I walked away.

At the end of the bridge, Eorla waited with Vize. “I am not Maeve or Donor. The old ways are gone. I reject any claim either of you may have of me and make none of you. I have granted you free passage for today. Use it as you see fit and may the Wheel of the World turn in your favor.”

She proceeded alone down the Avenue, a tall flame of power. As she approached the gathered crowd, they sank to their knees, rank upon rank bowing before her. All save one. Zev continued walking toward me, carrying Meryl’s limp body.

Vize smirked at me. “How’s it feel to be a fugitive?”

I punched him in the face.