Unshapely Things (17 page)

"Joe?"

His breath came in short gasps as he revolved slowly in the air intently scanning the street. He went very pale, and his eyes began to bulge.

I had never seen him like this before. "Stinkwort, talk to me!"

He gave me a wild look as a nimbus of ghostly light surrounded him. His hair unfurled in a static halo. Opening his mouth impossibly wide, he screamed, an earsplitting thunderous wail. I clamped my hands over my ears to block the sound as a spasm of grief overwhelmed me. The sound welled up higher in different pitches, and I realized that other flits nearby were screaming.

As the guttural cry ended, Stinkwort's sword materialized in his hand as he withdrew it from its glamoured scabbard. It glowed like a sliver of white fire encased in icy blue flame. He pointed it up the street, flew forward a few feet, and vanished. Instant silence surrounded me as I staggered against the wall. All around me, people wandered into the street, muttering in confusion.

Taking a deep breath to recover myself, I began to run in the direction he had pointed. Adrenaline began to eat up the alcohol in my system as I ran. I just kept going, not knowing what to do, just wanting to move. Cars streamed down the street past me, their horns blowing as people scrambled out of the way. The Avenue was a block and a half away, jammed with people running in every direction and forcing traffic to a standstill.

Stinkwort reappeared right in front of me. He still held the sword, and I could see dark smudges on it. "The alley!" he yelled, and vanished again.

I swerved to the left and pelted down a dark narrow confine between two buildings. Someone ran by me, hitting me in the shoulder. I felt a strange sensation sweep past, a sense of wrongness, like a discharge of negative energy. And I could smell blood. As I came to the end of the buildings, the stench was overpowering. I rounded the corner and skidded to a halt.

A human boy lay flung on his back with his legs twisted under him and his head to the side. Stinkwort sat crouched on the ground beyond him, cradling something and crooning quietly. I looked down at the boy. There was no question he was dead. The front of his green tunic was flayed open, dark and wet with blood. His torso had been savaged, as though the killer had slashed and stabbed in a maniacal frenzy. Blood splattered for yards in several directions. There was none of the methodical gutting I had come to expect. Light glittered off a small necklace twisted in his hair, and I fought down the urge to be sick with the realization. I moved the long blond hair away from his face, and I inhaled sharply.

"Fuck," I said as I backed away. It was Robin.

I circled around him to stand over Stinkwort. I realized now that he held a small flit in his arms. A chill ran over me as I recognized the fading yellow-white of her wings. As Stinkwort gently rocked her, the light of Tansy's essence flickered and faded to gray. He held her a moment in silence, stroking her fine pale hair. Then, he placed her delicately on the ground and picked up his sword. His eyes gleamed with red light. "I have his spoor," he shouted, and vanished. I spun around and looked up the alley. I had it, too. My awareness was so heightened by the excitement, I could almost see the essence that twisted away from the scene. I could smell it on my own shoulder where the murderer had jostled me as he passed. Stinkwort flashed into sight at the street and was gone again. I ran after him.

The trail led out of the alley and up toward the Avenue. Of course. More people had ventured into the street, their voices loud with the excitement of the flit scream. As I drew near the corner, I could feel the killer's essence begin to mingle with others. I pushed through a crowd of bystanders who were following the debate over a fender-bender. On the far side of the Avenue, the scent became stronger again. I ducked down yet another alley and paused. The scent had vanished. Indecisively, I looked back to the busy street behind me.

Taking a deep breath, I concentrated my own essence into my head, toward the only true ability I had left. A pulse of pain instantly burned in my forehead as I felt the scent of the killer's essence whisper in my face. It hadn't vanished. The murderer had put on a burst of speed as only the fey can and had moved so fast, he'd barely left any trace.

I allowed my essence to flow back and ran down the alley. At the end, I came out to crumbling warehouse docks. The foul-smelling essence reasserted itself as the killer slowed down again. Moving that fast used a lot of energy, and he'd already expended a lot in killing Tansy, if not Robin. He was conserving what he had left. I followed him, keeping an eye out for visual contact. The ache in my head had been reduced to a dull throb, but it was starting to build again. The sooner I stopped pushing what little ability I had, the better off I'd be.

I moved in and out of shipping containers and around loading equipment. The scent would thin, pool up in hidden spots, then thin out again in the open. It didn't feel like he was hiding from me, though, or even knew I was behind him somewhere. It felt like he was hunting. Twice I caught a good whiff of Stinkwort, but I was still catching up. It must be nice to have wings and the ability to teleport.

A breeze began blowing in from the harbor, ruffling the lazily swelling surface of the water. I moved faster as the trail started to dissipate. It bent back into another alley and led to the closed door of an old warehouse. As I reached up my hand to open it, a fuzziness descended on my face as though I had stepped into a spiderweb. I felt the prickling sensation of my defense shields activating on their own. The fuzziness diminished a bit, but still hovered around me. I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

I felt an overwhelming desire to lie down. A ward vibrated somewhere nearby, and I didn't have the ability to counteract it. Against the screaming protest of my brain, I filtered more of my essence into my shields. It didn't stop the ward spell, but it prevented me from surrendering to its command to sleep. If I didn't find it quickly, I was going to pass out from the pain anyway.

I stood in what appeared to be a large office. To the right, light from the waning moon filtered through dirt-smeared windows to reveal rows of desks facing each other. With each step I took, I felt the ward spell grow stronger. As I came around the first desk, I found a dark-haired fairy crumpled on the floor, wings dully flickering in the dark. I leaned down and touched his shoulder, and he rolled languidly onto his back. He was still alive.

Cautiously, I continued forward, the killer's essence all around me. At the third desk down, I sensed Stinkwort. The two essences scattered about the middle of the room. Several of the desks were askew, the contents of their surfaces swept to the floor. Stinkwort had fought with him.

I could sense a third essence now, another fairy. Just past the disturbed desks, I no longer sensed Stinkwort, just the killer and the new fairy. Even as I smelled fairy blood, I could feel the lethargy of the ward-spell taking its toll. Ever slower, I moved farther into the room. At the end of the desks, in an open space by a photocopy machine, I found the victim.

He was young, blond, and well dressed except for the torn front of his shirt revealing his gaping chest cavity. Like the others, he lay on his back, his wings pinned to the floor with two cheap ward stones. I could feel the spell already weakening on one of the stones. I slumped to the floor, staring at the dark hole in the boy's chest and desperately wanting to sleep.

The two wards were working together. The more stones involved in a warding, the greater their effect and the more efficient their energy use. The downside was that they were easier to disrupt than single stones. If I touched one of them directly, though, I risked an energy feedback that would not only knock me out but probably cause physical damage as well.

I looked around groggily for something to knock one of them out of the way. Picking up a stapler, I decided against it. With all the base metals in it, it would just act as a conductor. I moved some papers around on the floor next to me and found a wooden ruler. Thanking whatever gods might be listening, I crawled closer to the body. Straining against my protesting head, I shot some of my essence into the ruler as I batted it at a ward, hoping that the momentary burst would block the feedback. I shouted as something convulsed in my head.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to breathe past the pain. Without needing to look, I knew the spell was broken. I no longer felt the compulsion to sleep though I had the desire to for a different reason. My arm tingled a bit where some of the ward energy had filtered through the ruler, but I could still move my fingers.

I opened my eyes and stared at the corpse. My nerves were so jagged, I could feel the faint whisper of old human essences all around me now. What really intrigued was the pulse of elf essence coming off the victim. I leaned forward to peer into his chest, but it was too dark to see inside. Fighting a wave of nausea I reached my hand into the wet, slippery cavity and touched something hard. I jerked my hand back at the sensation of wrongness. Whatever it was, it felt like an elf had powered it. Touching it hadn't seemed to do anything other than startle me, so I reached back in. I could feel a sandy grittiness in the boy's chest, then the stone that had become the killer's calling card. This time it had some kind of charge on it. I grimaced at the squelching sound my hand made as I withdrew.

My hand glistened in the moonlight as I held the stone up. It appeared gray and no more remarkable than the others. The essence radiating from it made no sense. It would seem most like elf, then shift to a subtle fairy, then back again. As I tried to place the feeling, I thought of Shay. It was like looking at Shay, the pretty-beautiful boy, and trying to decide quickly if he were male or female.

The surviving fairy groaned again, and I went to him. Feebly, he curled away from me in fear.

"It's okay," I said, but he wasn't reassured. I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. As the operator took the address and asked me to stay on the line, a flutter in the stone caught my attention. The energy was dissipating. I glanced down at the kid, who was cowering half under the desk. He looked no worse for wear. He probably wouldn't appreciate my telling him that the vagaries of fate that gave him dark hair had saved his life tonight.

I made a decision and disconnected the call. I had already contaminated the crime scene by removing the stone, and whatever charge was on it was fading. I hoped Murdock wouldn't be too mad at me when he found out. Like they say: In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Help's on the way," I said to the kid. "Stay here. Don't touch anything." I went into the alley and ran the block or so back to the Avenue. With all the weaving in and out of the warehouses, I had ended up all the way at the far end of the Weird. To my right, traffic was a barrage of light and sound and backing up toward me. Cars coming in from my left were turning onto the Eastern Service Road to avoid the mess. I cursed my lack of ability to do a sending.

A cab turned the corner slowly as the driver tried to see what all the commotion was about. I jumped in the back before he could pull away. Only in the Weird can a man with obvious blood on his hands get a taxi. I gave him Briallen's address. He immediately made an illegal turn and drove quickly along the edge of Southie. I held the stone gingerly between my index finger and thumb with just enough tension to keep from dropping it. The essence on it was definitely fading. We pulled up onto Louisburg Square in an impressive ten minutes. I was surprised to find Briallen's house alive with light, the front door wide open, and Briallen herself standing on the threshold. I paid the driver and hurried up the walk.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"I didn't, really," she said, closing the door behind us. "It was odd. Not like a sending, but more like an impression of your need. What's happened? What is that?" She gestured at the stone.

"Let's go up to the study," I said. Without waiting for an answer, I rushed up the stairs. Briallen was right behind me with a grace and speed I always found surprising. Not for the first time did I wonder about her age. I entered the study and placed the stone on a clear space on the center table. "Hurry! What is the essence on this?" I said.

Briallen peered down at it for a second, then picked it up. She dropped it and recoiled. "It's saturated in fairy blood!"

"Sorry, I should have warned you."

"Blood of a murder," she murmured, picking up the stone again. Slowly, she rolled it in her palm, staring at it, her lips compressed into a discomforted line. "It's elfin, but twisted somehow. There's a sense of fairy about it, but that feels almost like an afterthought."

"That's what I thought, too. But what does it mean?"

She placed the stone back on the table with a look of relief. "It just feels wrong. What's stranger still is that the stone has been purposefully and intensely infused with it, almost like making a ward. It's almost gone now."

"I'm guessing the other stones were all like this, but I didn't see them until after the essence had dissipated," I said.

"Is this the same type of stone?"

I nodded. "One's white, one's black, and one's gray like this. I'm sure they are all the same crystal, selenite, but they disappeared before tests could be run."

She smiled and arched an eyebrow. "Oh, it's selenite, all right. It's also pre-Convergence."

Impressed, I looked back at the stone. When the fey found themselves bodily transported here after Convergence, pieces of the physical realm of Faerie came with them, sometimes just a house or even less. Those places were very few and are closely guarded. Organic and inorganic material from them is highly sought after because the fey's abilities work best through them. Something pre-Convergence, something actually from the true Faerie, is extremely rare.

"This must be worth a fortune," I said.

Briallen lifted her chin to speak but gasped instead. "Connor, you're bleeding."

Even as she said it, I felt the trickle of blood coming out of my nose. She handed me a tissue, then pressed her hand against my head. "What the hell happened tonight?"