Uncertain Allies (16 page)

20

I grinned at the approaching sound of an engine. Murdock had come through with my request for the motorcycle. He coasted the bike to the curb in front of my building and cut the engine. I whistled in admiration. “When the hell did Bar get a Ducati?”

Murdock pulled off his helmet. “About six months ago, I think. I’m surprised he let me take it instead of the Harley. I think he sleeps with it.”

I trailed my hand along the front. “A Monster, right?”

“The S,” said Murdock.

The bike really was a beast. Even parked, the machine looked like it was in motion, stripped down to the bare bones, not a piece of chrome wasted. I circled around the back to check out the exhaust. “Man, I wish I still had the money for something like this.”

“Okay. I got the bike. What’s the plan?” Murdock asked.

“I can’t catch the blue-essence surge. I tried essence speeding the other night, but it kicked up a storm in my head, and my nose bled for an hour,” I said.

“Basically, you want to race around the Weird on a bike,” he said.

I tried to look innocent. “Well, I think the blue surge is related to the dwarf murders. It’s shown up nearby every time.”

Murdock smirked like he wasn’t buying it. He handed me a helmet. “Get on.”

“What? I thought you were dropping the bike off for me to use,” I said.

He shook his head. “No way am I letting you take this bike. Bar would scream if he found out. I didn’t tell him you wanted it.”

I pulled the helmet on. “This is so not fair.”

“You can always try running faster,” he said.

I grabbed his shoulder and swung my leg over the bike. “I’d leave you in the dust.”

“Left tap, slow down. Right tap, stop. I tap you, hang on. Every helmet bump costs a beer. Got it?” he said.

“Got it. Let’s check out the burn district first,” I said.

Murdock started the motorcycle as I gripped his waist. To show me who was boss, he tapped my hand and tore up the street. I laughed at my momentary panic at the speed, then settled in for the ride. It had been a while since I was on a bike. We tore up Old Northern, turning heads as we passed.

We cruised up and down side streets, keeping an eye out for a hint of blue essence. Its appearance was a nightly occurrence. Sometimes people vanished afterward, but not every time. Murdock looped through areas where the Dead were known to congregate, since I suspected a connection existed between the Dead and the surge. Every reported sighting I had checked out had faded Dead essence in the area.

“We don’t get a lot of calls about the Dead anymore,” Murdock said during a pit stop.

The Dead had been major trouble before Eorla contained the Taint. The Taint had heightened their propensity to violence. They had torn apart the Weird, causing mayhem and death. That Commissioner Murdock had been taking bribes to look the other way didn’t help, either, but that was something I wouldn’t say in front of Leo. “Since the solitaries learned how to fight back, I’m guessing the Dead have decided to keep a low profile.”

Murdock smiled around the mouth of a water bottle. “Yeah, a cop loves to hear vigilante justice works.”

I laughed. “You know that’s not what I meant. The Dead had to learn they have to get along here. They thought they could slaughter people like they did in TirNaNog, and the solitaries had to make them understand that things don’t work like that here. Think of it as a cultural conflict that worked itself out.”

“Uh-huh. At least we’re not finding decapitated bodies anymore. Ready?” he asked.

We donned our helmets and got back on the bike. I hadn’t ridden in a long time, and my butt was going to be complaining in the morning. Murdock turned a corner and tapped my hands. I grabbed his waist tighter as he picked up speed. Two blocks ahead, the blue surge swept across the road. Murdock raced the bike up to the turn. I bumped his helmet as he came to a full stop. The alley was empty.

“Missed it. That’s one beer for me,” he shouted over the engine.

“No fair. I didn’t know you were stopping,” I said.

“Pay attention,” he said. He gunned it up the alley. I tilted my head on the recoil and bumped his shoulder instead of his head. Ten minutes later, the surge appeared in the road ahead, moving away at a good clip. Murdock swerved around a car that had slammed on its brakes. I leaned in to the turn, trying not to think about the sandy grit in the road as the bike tilted.

Murdock righted the bike and ripped it up the street. The surge billowed ahead, dark indigo shapes flashing in and out of sight. It pulled away, gaining speed as we neared. It twisted across the sidewalk and plunged into a building. Plunged, as in vanished through a brick wall. Murdock hit the brakes hard. The rear tire kicked out, and I held on as the force almost threw me. Murdock killed the engine and whipped off his helmet. “What the hell is that?”

“A wall,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said.

I eased off the bike and approached the wall. It was an illusion. Someone had created a shield out of hardened essence. I touched the facing with my right hand, feeling the essence tingle like static under my fingers. “There’s a shield barrier here, a good one. This must be why I keep losing track of them. They must have barriers like this scattered all over the neighborhood.”

“They?” asked Murdock.

I looked at him. “They’re the Dead, Leo. I thought the surge was following the Dead, but it
is
the Dead. I didn’t realize until tonight that Dead essence fades faster than living essence. I was gauging the time frame for the faded essence wrong.”

“So you’re saying the Dead are kidnapping people,” he said.

“Looks that way,” I said.

He smirked. “Remind me again about that resolved cultural conflict thing you were talking about.”

I got back on the bike. “They’re not doing the killing. The
leanansidhe
is. Remember, the surge showed up down in the Tangle
after
the darkness did. Let’s circle around the block and see what’s on the other side.”

Murdock did a slow cruise down the sidewalk. At the corner, the engine jumped in pitch as we turned. We were on the edge of the Tangle, with its engine-killing spells.

Darkness shadowed the block as Murdock coasted to a stop. I hopped off again and found another shield barrier. My finger sank beneath it as I touched it. Suspicious, I pulled away. It didn’t make sense for one shield to be softer than the other. Ready for a trap, I placed both hands against the wall, I pushed again. My left hand slipped beneath the surface, but not the right one. I stepped back and looked at my hands.

“What’s the matter?” Murdock asked.

“I think my tattoo is letting me through the shield.” The tattoo on my left arm was created from the filigree that had once decorated a silver branch. The fey used silver branches to cross the barriers between worlds. I lifted my left hand to the wall and pushed. As my arm went through, it dawned on me that silver branches would work with shield barriers, too. I held my breath and pressed forward, leading with the arm. I passed through the barrier, its essence itching across my skin until I stood on the other side. From my side, the wall was transparent. I could see Murdock frowning, but the look said he couldn’t see me. Behind me, the faint residue of Dead essence trailed across a long, empty alley. I went back through the wall to the sidewalk.

“That was freaky,” Murdock said.

“It’s gone. They either looped back around or left through another barrier,” I said.

Murdock scanned the street. “Keep looking?”

“Oh, yeah. We almost had it that time,” I said.

The surge teased us as we rode through the neighborhood, a flash in the distance that vanished again and again. We followed but didn’t get close. Murdock turned down a narrow lane, and the engine guttered. We had moved deeper into the Tangle, but as far as I knew, remained outside the central area. Murdock goosed the engine. Warehouses loomed to either side, wet and dark, their rooflines curling overhead. Fire escapes tangled into each other, forming a tunnel of metal.

As we continued, the lane lengthened and appeared to run for a mile—impossible for the area it covered. Murdock had to rev the engine more often to keep it going. Illusion twisted our perceptions. What looked like a long, straight lane was more likely a circle. I searched for a break in the walls, some other exit than the false promise ahead. The motorcycle whined and shuddered. With a loud pop from the exhaust, the engine died.

“We’ve drifted farther into the Tangle than it looks,” I said. While Murdock held the bike steady, I got off. The lane stretched in either direction as far as I could see.

He leaned back in his seat to get a look at the engine. “The bike’s okay, though, right?”

“Yeah. Once we get it out of here, it should start right up,” I said.

Murdock wheeled the motorcycle around toward the direction we had come. “Are we even going to get out of here?”

“We should be okay. Backtracking usually works. It’s going forward that’s a bitch,” I said.

A screech of metal tore through the air, followed by a crash. Ahead, a pall of smoke curled across the street.

“What’s the hell is that?” Murdock asked.

“Sounded like someone’s car spell-crashed and hit something,” I said.

More sounds echoed toward us, tortured metal and rumbling falls. Smoke rose higher, blocking the view. Blue light flickered in the haze. As the light intensified, a churning cloud of essence filled the lane from one side to the other. Behind us, the street stretched even farther than before, with no visible turns or exits.

“Whatever that is, it’s coming right at us,” Murdock said.

The blue light became more prominent and flared. Deep within it, something moved, a great silhouette of darker blue. The fire escapes rattled and shuddered as the cloud rolled forward. Networks of stairs and landings twisted and pulled from the walls, crashing into tangled, jagged heaps. The blue surge flared and rushed toward us.

“A plan would be a good thing if you have one,” Murdock said.

“Park the bike,” I said. We pushed it against the wall. I pulled Murdock several feet into the shallow depression of a bricked-over door.

He resisted, pulling his arm away. “I can’t leave it there.”

I pushed him back against a wall and flattened myself next to him. “We have to. We don’t want the bike’s metal interfering. This is far enough. Harden your body shield, Leo, and brace yourself. That stuff’s going to hit us hard.”

Crimson essence blossomed around us as Murdock activated the shield. “I thought we wanted to catch it?”

The ground vibrated as the surge approached with a growing roar. “Catch it, not get run over by it. Whatever you do, don’t drop that shield,” I shouted.

Murdock closed his eyes in concentration. His body shield shifted, darkening from a rich crimson to a deep maroon, pressing around us in fractured planes. Indigo and white essence billowed toward us. The fierce cloud consumed the entire lane, yanking down fire escapes and tossing dumpsters aside as it passed.

Murdock staggered when it hit, his shield shuddering and bending under a rain of yellow sparks. He steadied himself against the wall, forcing the shield back against the passing wave. With a scream of stressed metal, the fire escape above toppled into the street, narrowly missing us. The surge slammed us against the wall. Murdock’s shield heaved and shifted. My body ached under the pressure, black spots flashing across my vision as the dark mass in my head danced in confusion.

A thick plume of indigo essence smudged the horizon, swirling and flickering as it moved toward us. A sound weaved itself into the background noise of the city, subtle but distinct, an uneven hum broken by sharp notes. My ears pricked to them, and my heart raced, responding to some deep memory, a sound of danger like a wild yelp in the night. By the time the sound resolved into the barking that my instinct had already recognized, the low hum rose higher and became the clear call of horns, deep bass soundings that signaled one unmistakable thing: the approach of a hunting party.

Caution forced me back against a wall while curiosity tempted me to lean out. The light grew, its color bleeding from indigo to violet. Figures appeared in the rolling fog, animal and wild human shapes leaping and lunging past.

The cresting wave of essence threw me down. Despite Murdock’s shield, I bounced in a hazy blue torrent like a pebble in a flood, my body hitting the wall again and again as the riders and runner swept past. The world turned into a confusion of light and tangled bodies twisting and falling among winged solitaries and running beasts.

The shield buckled, and the blue essence swirled around us. Murdock lifted off the ground and grabbed at a tangle of fire escape as he rose into the air. I grappled with his kicking legs as the surge coalesced around him like a cocoon. Blue haze obscured my sight. A blast of crimson essence burst through, shredding the blue light. The surge retreated up the street, eddies of faint gray mist trailing after it.

A dark figure broke away and wheeled toward us on a massive black horse with yellow-lit eyes. Thick fog rolled along the ground as the enormous beast reared with a thunderous neigh. Its hooves sparked with yellow lightning as the horse came back down.

Behind its enormous head, a cloaked figure pulled the reins in hard, turning a skull-masked face toward me, eyes burning like embers beneath an antlered helm. The rider stared, as the agitated horse pawed in the fog. With a flick of the reins, the rider wheeled the horse and cantered away. The rider lifted a sword, a long blade of red flame, and let out a scream that pierced my chest with its vibration. The rider disappeared back into the haze, fading away as the mob raced off into the night.

Dazed, Murdock climbed down from the fire escape where he had landed and slid to the ground. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

I crouched in front of him. Taking him by the chin, I shifted his head left and right. Murdock opened his eyes. His skin was abraded, but he didn’t appear seriously injured. I didn’t hurt as much as he did. He had taken the brunt of the hits. Chalk up another debt to him for saving my ass. “I would have said a train. You should get checked for a concussion.”