Uncertain Allies (20 page)

His words had the cadence of a chant. He knew this thing, had a sense of it, and there was a sense of truth to what he said. I gazed into my beer. “Why have I never heard of this?”

He made a dismissive sound. “You Celts love to lord over others with your superiority while you wallow in your ignorance. Your people turned away from the truth long ago, Grey, content to indulge themselves with no thought for the future or the past. Do you know why Convergence happened? Because the Celts believed the world would never end because for them it never began. With all your talk of the turning of the Wheel, you and your people act like It turns in place, that nothing was ever different, and nothing would ever change. And that’s why you know nothing of the Gap. You know nothing of the past and have no understanding of the future.”

Annoyed, I sipped my beer. “You want a religious discussion? I could say the Teuts caused Convergence because of their doom and gloom. When you think the world is going to end, you start acting like it, then you cause it. You create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You sit there and tell me the Elven King wants the faith stone so he can challenge Maeve; and then you want to blame the Celts for the destruction of Faerie? Spare me.”

“You cannot stop what is coming. The darkness is beyond comprehension,” he said.

“It can be controlled. I’ve seen the
leanansidhe
use it. If something can be controlled, it can stopped,” I said.

“That thinking, I fear, will bring ruin to us all. No one can control the Gap,” he said.

“This isn’t an abstract discussion, Brokke. You’re telling me that I’ve handed Bergin Vize a dangerous weapon that can destroy everything. He has to be stopped.”

Brokke pursed his lips. “What makes you think I’m any more comfortable that you have the same power?”

28

I woke alone at midday. Meryl, praise be, had set up the coffeemaker. She left a note to join her for lunch if I managed to get up before the sun went down. The funny part was she wasn’t being sarcastic. We were both night owls and cast no stones in the waking-up-late department. I took a leisurely shower, then walked over the Oh No bridge to catch the subway.

At Boylston Street, the train left me with a screech of metal on metal as it rode a sharp turn out of the station. When no one on the platform or in the token booth was paying attention, I slipped through the break in the fencing near the stairs. I walked the access curbing beside the tracks toward the next station in Copley Square. I had told Murdock that Boston was riddled with tunnels—some official and legal like the subways and some not so much. Not far into the tunnel was a concrete niche that wasn’t concrete but a glamour hiding a not-so-official tunnel that led to Meryl’s office in the Guildhouse.

Meryl had been with the Guild a long time. She had worked her way up in the archives division until she became the Chief Archivist. Despite doing important work, she isn’t respected by the investigative division the way she should be. I should know. I was one of those jerks once. I knew Meryl before I lost my abilities and made assumptions about her that weren’t fair. I thought she was lazy and grumpy. Once I was bounced out of the Guildhouse, I learned she was neither—far from it. Taken advantage of at work, sure, but not lazy. I still think she’s grumpier than she claims, but a lot of that has its reasons. I wouldn’t have her be any other way.

In the course of her career, she had discovered things in the Guildhouse—beneath the Guildhouse—that had been forgotten or lost. Tunnels layered their way into the earth, complicated mazes of stone and brick that only dwarven crafters could have produced. Long-hidden rooms filled with rare treasures lay dormant until Meryl had found them. She had made a few improvements of her own along the way, like the secret bolt-hole out of her office into the subway system.

As our bond grew, Meryl had given me privileges she gave to no one else—like tuning some of her wall illusions to my body signature so that I could enter or leave the Guildhouse unseen. I eased down the steps that led from the concrete niche. At the bottom, a long, narrow tunnel ended at her office, a bright rectangle of light in the distance.

The wall glamour included a warning anytime someone passed through, so Meryl knew I was coming. She worked at her desk, her face intent as she read her computer screen. Both Gillen Yor and Briallen had given her a clean bill of health, and seeing her back in action was an enormous relief.

From the office side, the tunnel exit appeared to be a blank space between a filing cabinet and a credenza. Meryl spun her chair as I stepped through. I leaned over a stack of manuals and kissed her on the lips. She had trimmed her hair and dyed it lemon yellow

“You look great,” I said.

“Comas are very refreshing,” she said.

The office was a shambles, filing drawers half-open, with papers jumbled in them, stacks of reports spilled across the floor, the guts of Meryl’s backdoor computer spewed out across the credenza. “What the hell are you doing?”

She blew a puff of air that fluttered her bangs. “Not me. It was like this when I came in this morning. I’ve been looking for patterns.”

I picked my way over a mess of e-mail printouts and tossed a box of old CDs off a chair to sit. “Of what?”

“What they were looking for,” she said.

“Let’s start with who,” I said.

“Let’s call it macGoren, et al. Various agents have been in and out, but the directives are coming from macGoren,” she said.

“Now the what,” I said.

“The who again, actually. You,” she said.

“Me? Why would they be searching your office for information about me?” I asked.

She shrugged. “We’re boinking.”

“We boink?”

“Not for at least three months”—she narrowed her eyes at me—“that I know of.”

I chuckled. “No worry. It’s been that long.” I watched her read through something on her computer screen. “You said Nigel was looking for something you knew, too.”

“I did,” she said, and kept reading.

“So, macGoren and Nigel both think you know something important about me,” I said.

“They do,” she said.

“Aaaaand . . . we’re not really having a conversation, are we?” I asked.

She glanced at me. “They want their weapon back.”

Meryl had made a connection between me and Nigel I had never considered before I lost my abilities. When I didn’t understand Nigel’s coldness, she pointed out that I was his number one soldier in the fight against the Elven King. When I lost my abilities, he lost what he considered his advantage. “I’m not a weapon,” I said.

“But you were a tool and didn’t know it,” she said.

“Regardless, I’m neither now,” I said.

She pursed her lips. “Maybe not a weapon but maybe still a tool.”

I scrunched my face at her. “Are you continuing this metaphor or are you insulting me?”

She grinned. “I so love that you’re uncertain.”

I folded my arms against my chest. “Why does that amuse you so much?”

“Because you used to be this arrogant prick who thought he knew everything even when he didn’t, and now you act sorta human, and that baffled look you sometimes get on your face is incredibly adorable,” she said.

“And you like to kick puppies, too,” I said.

“Gee, Grey. I might be brutally honest, but I don’t think I’m cruel,” she said.

“So, be honest. What have you found?” I asked.

“A lot of chatter about the night of the riots and what you did at the Old Northern bridge. I have to confess to being intrigued by that, too.”

“That’s what I came to talk to you about. I spoke to Brokke last night. He thinks I have the ability to access a primordial darkness he calls the Gap,” I said.

“Nigel talked about that a lot. It’s part of the Teutonic creation myth,” she said.

“Do you think it’s a myth?”

She shrugged. “What’s a myth except a creative explanation for something people don’t understand? Something that is cloaked in myth doesn’t mean it isn’t about something real.”

“We don’t have a myth like that,” I said.

“Myths are created when something is important to a culture, Grey. The beginning and the end of the world isn’t something the Celts focus on. We care about the world as we find it, not as it was or will be. The Teuts took a different approach,” she said.

“So, Brokke could be wrong,” I said.

She shifted her eyes from side to side, pretending to check if anyone was listening. “If anyone ever heard me say this, Grey, I’d get kicked out of the Grove. Celts are interested in questions about the world. Teuts are interested in answers. Either one could be the right path, but that’s not important. Finding a path is. Only you can decide what to believe.”

I sighed. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

A small smile slipped onto Meryl’s lips. “You know what, sweetie? You just made another step on your own path.”

I set my chin. “Then my next step is to kill Bergin Vize.”

Meryl stared, a long, blank stare while she turned something over in her mind. Silence filled the room as we looked at each other, as if a turning point had been reached. Whether it was in our relationship or something greater, I couldn’t tell, but I felt it coming.

“Let it go, Connor,” she said.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Maybe that’s why you should,” she said.

“I can’t. I unleashed something in Vize that can’t be stopped by anyone else,” I said.

“What if you release something in yourself that can’t be stopped?” she asked.

“I’ve never wanted to end the world,” I said.

“Are you sure? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been trying to stop something. Every time you do, the world as it is ends and becomes something different, something new,” she said.

Her words twisted in my gut. What was change but the end of one thing for another? “That’s how the Wheel of the World works,” I said.

She looked down, and muttered, “Dammit.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She looked me in the eye then. “What do you want me to do?”

“First, we call Murdock. Then we hit Vize when he least expects it.”

29

Murdock pulled to the curb on Tide Street. He eased out of the car, his tactical uniform all black and business, and scanned the sidewalk like a cop. Meryl pushed herself off the wall she had been leaning against and hugged him. “You finally updated your wardrobe,” she said.

He hugged her back. “I see that a coma hasn’t made yours any more subtle.”

Meryl wore her biker jacket over a black lace top. What the neckline hid, the tight fabric more than made up for. Black leather pants and high, flat-soled boots with lots of buckles completed the outfit. She tilted her head and feigned confusion. “What do you mean? This is my running outfit.”

“Running to or from?” he asked.

“At,” she said.

He leaned against his car and crossed his arms. “What’s the plan?”

Meryl looked at me. “You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked.

“I’m sure,” I said.

She lifted her head, and the subtle flutter of a sending wafted through the air. In the distance, a howl mixed with the sound of sirens. Something primal tugged at me, raising the hair on the back of my neck. Another howl joined in, and another, until we were ringed with the sound of yips and barks drawing closer. A dark shape leaped from a building in the distance and landed on all fours. As it scrambled down the street toward us, more figures appeared from every direction, dark and howling.

Responding to some instinct, Murdock and I backed next to Meryl, who lounged in a casual pose against the wall. Murdock’s hand went to his gun holster, but Meryl put her own hand on his arm. “Don’t,” she said.

The figures bounded closer, bunching together until they formed an arc of rippling muscle and fur. They ranged along the edge of the circle of light, wiry lupine bodies darting forward and back, agitation showing in the orange gleam of their eyes. Some pulled up onto their hind legs and howled against the sky.

The
vitniri
surrounded us. An unsettling merging of man and wolf, they struck terror in everyone who crossed their path. The tang of musk and sweat hung in the air as they jostled each other, pawing and nipping at one another. Their howls and barks receded as one broke through the circle into the light. He loomed over us, peering down his long-snouted face as he licked his tongue across sharp teeth. “We came,” he said.

“We need to find someone,” Meryl said.

He growled deep in his throat. “Give us a scent. We will find him.”

Meryl gestured at me. “He smells like this one.”

I resisted the urge to shudder as the
vitniri
regarded me. The
leanansidhe
had called me “brother.” I suppose it made sense that Vize could be considered the same. I smiled. “Hi.”

He leaned in close, his nostrils flaring. His eyes never left mine as he sniffed, his face hovering over my face. He stopped and exhaled, a rancid odor hitting me as a plume of essence settled on my skin. His lips curled back, and I flinched as a long tongue snaked out and licked my cheek.

He retreated, hunching his shoulders as his body signature brightened around him in a halo of deep orange light. He arched his spine and roared. A cloud of essence burst from his mouth, curling in the night air as the pack around us barked and howled. They danced in the cloud, the essence heightening their excitement. They jumped and leaped down the dark street in several directions. The lead
vitniri
dropped to all fours, howled at me, then dashed up the alley.

I reached up to wipe my face, but Meryl grabbed my hand. “Leave it. It’s a tag so the pack doesn’t confuse you with its prey.”

“Can someone explain to me what’s happening?” Murdock asked.

Meryl walked into the street and peered into the distance. “The
vitniri
can scent essence over long distances for a brief period.”

“Why the hell didn’t you mention this before?” he asked.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Uh . . . coma?”

Murdock had the good sense to be chagrined. I couldn’t blame him though. The
vitniri
freaked me out a little, too. My body was taking its time settling out of fight-or-flight mode, and I knew what the damned things were. They had protected Vize during the riots without knowing it. With their strong sense of honor, they wanted to repay the error. “How do we follow them?” I asked.

“The alpha will send the location,” she said.

“They’re not going to kill him when they find him, are they?” Murdock asked.

“The alpha will do his best to prevent that,” she said.

“ ‘His best’?” Murdock asked.

Meryl nodded once. “His best. The pack is in heightened hunt mode. They listen to the alpha, but emotions can get out of hand. Be glad you weren’t down here when the Taint was loose.”

I paced the sidewalk, alert and anxious. An occasional howl brought me to a stop, and we tensed, waiting to see if Meryl received a sending. She remained still, head cocked toward the sound. The first few times, she shook her head to indicate she hadn’t heard anything. After a while, she took to filing her nails without acknowledging the sounds.

An hour later, Meryl stood in the middle of the sidewalk, hands planted on her hips. “Let’s move,” she said.

Murdock and I trailed after her as she walked down the alley. “Have they found him?”

“They hit two old traces but nothing solid. They’re running a grid pattern. This area’s clear for a couple of blocks,” she said.

As we rounded the corner to the next street, my head buzzed with the effects of scrying. Without being asked, Meryl took my hand and activated her body shield. The shield draped over us, deadening the threat of pain. “No one’s getting any good reads on the future lately, mostly static. People keep trying, though.”

“That happened before Castle Island, you know,” I said.

She glanced at me from under her yellow bangs. “And before Forest Hills and before Boston Common and before the riots.”

“I get it, I get it,” said Murdock. “Something bad’s going down. Can we focus on the problem at hand instead of going all ominous?”

“Just stating the facts,” said Meryl.

“Can the facts be more about succeeding than dreading?” he asked.

Meryl started to say something but snapped her mouth closed instead. A reflective look came over her face, and she swung my hand. “They found him,” she said.

She pulled me along the sidewalk into the next alley, a sinuous gauntlet of brick and trash. Howls filled the air as we approached the end, the buildings curving over the next street like cupped hands. We stopped in an intersection of six streets,
vitniri
running in circles around a cluster of darkness pressed against the narrow end of a corner building. The dark mass in my head contracted and flared with heat.

“All I see is shadow,” said Murdock.

“It’s him,” I said. The darkness in front of me swelled and undulated against the building, feathering along the cornice of the first floor. Around it,
vitniri
darted and snarled, avoiding its edge. Whenever the shadow shifted, the lupine figures backed away. Whether the alpha held them in check or they sensed danger in the shadow’s touch made no difference to me. They weren’t going to die because I had asked for their help.

Meryl primed her hands with essence but left them at her sides. “He’s using some kind of shield to hide behind. It’s being generated by an essence spot near the ground.”

I peered into the shadow with my sensing ability. The darkness made a pale white haze seem brighter than it was. It moved and shifted down near the curb. Living essence moved around, not stone wards. “He’s got Gretan with him. She has a cloaking ability.”

“The nixie who left the bite scars in your neck?” Meryl asked.

“She left scars?” My hand went to the back of my neck. The last time I had encountered Vize, the small blue nixie jumped on my back and bit me. Her tiny claws left their marks, too. I hadn’t realized they scarred.

“Upper teeth. She could use an orthodontist,” Meryl said.

The dark mass in my head ached as it contracted again. Across the square, a tendril of darkness snaked out of Vize’s shadow and stabbed at one of the
vitniri
. The lupine jumped away without being touched as his brothers moved closer on the other side. Another tendril shot out as the first one withdrew, and the shadow shifted. Vize seemed unable to spread his attack, and the
vitniri
used their numbers to keep him pinned. Even though he had the power of the darkness, he was outnumbered. It was a stalemate.

“What’s our plan?” Murdock asked.

Meryl hardened her shield as some
vitniri
danced around us. “When you fought him in TirNaNog, I saw a shadow like that appear when you made contact. It knocked you off your feet.”

“It hurt like hell, too,” I said.

“If you do that again, maybe Murdock and I can subdue him before he regains his balance,” she said.

“Not with the nixie shielding him,” I said. Vize didn’t have a body shield anymore. Despite her small size, Gretan generated a formidable shield for both of them. Meryl would be able to penetrate it, but that would draw their attention and make her a primary target. I didn’t want that, not after her coma and not after her doubts about the sanity of my plan. A physical assault wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

“Then let’s get rid of her.” Before I could stop her, Meryl set her stance, stretched her arm out, and fired a tight, intense burst of essence from her hand. It sliced through the nixie’s shield and hit the faint hazy body signature dead-on. The shield evaporated as the nixie tumbled out of the shadow, a blur of blue skin and white hair that stopped splayed out on the sidewalk. Vize’s image resolved into view within the darkness.

Meryl waggled her fingers. “Damn, that burned.”

The nixie didn’t move. “Is she dead?” asked Murdock.

Meryl flicked her bangs back. “Nah. Precision stun. Word to the wise, Murdock: Having a kickin’ body shield doesn’t mean it’s invulnerable if someone knows what they’re doing.”

A plume of darkness raced across the intersection and slammed into Meryl. Her body shield collapsed. She stumbled, and I caught her as she shielded herself again.

“Point taken,” Murdock said.

Vize leaned over Gretan, shadows swirling around him.

“Shoot him,” I said.

Murdock aimed his gun. I don’t know what was sadder about that moment, that I asked my friend to shoot somebody or that he considered doing it. “Bergin Vize, this is the Boston police. Get down on the ground with your hands out.”

Vize ignored him as he lifted Gretan from the ground.

Meryl held her hand out for the gun. “I’ll do it.”

Murdock relaxed his stance but didn’t holster the gun. “No. There has to be another way.”

“If killing one person could save the world, would you do it, Leo?” I asked.

“No one’s that important, Connor,” he said.

I stared at the darkness, stared at Vize in the darkness. He stared back, keeping the
vitniri
at bay with feints and starts of shadow, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. He acted too calm for the position he was in. He had a plan. I didn’t want to give him any more time to execute it. “You’re right, Leo, but not the way you meant.”

As I walked away from Meryl, her shield slipped off me and the staccato beat of scrying hit my mind. She started to follow. “Please, stay back, Meryl. Leo’s right. I started this, and I have to end it. One person doesn’t matter.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Don’t do this, Connor.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the one here he’s afraid of,” I said.

She pressed against me. “You don’t know that. You don’t.”

I glanced at Murdock. “You can always shoot him if you change your mind.”

He shook his head and looked away. “Maybe I’ll shoot both of you.”

Despite my lack of popularity with the Murdocks, I told myself he was joking. I was sure he was. Pretty sure.

Vitniri
paced beside me as I crossed the intersection. Several ran close in, their eyes glazed with the heat of the hunt, tongues lolling as they scented me. One or two nipped at my clothing, then backed off, barking in frustration or confusion.

I hadn’t seen Vize since the night of the riots in the Weird. Then, he had been a little worse for wear—binding burns, cuts, bruises, and a nice split across his cheek where I had clocked him. He pulled the darkness back, let it rise and curl over us like a canopy. It didn’t touch me. Touching each other had ramifications, usually bad ones. That much Vize understood.

He cradled Gretan against his chest. “Odd company you are keeping,” he said.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said.

“You’ll miss the point of all this if you do,” he said.

“There is no point, Vize. There never was. It’s all chaos and power games,” I said.

He arched his eyebrow. “And you’re playing and being played. Of course, it’s chaos and power. The reach for power always causes chaos. It’s the Wheel of the World, Grey. Without chaos, there is no change, and without change, nothing progresses.”

“You expect me to believe you’re in this for progress? This city is in ruins because of you. You’re not going to spread your brand of progress. I won’t let you. It ends here.”

“You know you can’t touch me,” he said.

“I don’t have to,” I said. I pulled the dagger from my boot, the enchanted one that Briallen had given me. It radiated heat, the runes on the blade glistening with pale fire. The air around my hand rippled, and the blade stretched to the length of a sword. I held it with the tip stopping short of Vize’s chest.

Unimpressed, Vize looked down at the blade, then back at me. “You think you can kill me. You’re not who you think you are.”

I pressed the tip against his tunic. “Last chance to surrender.”

He lifted his hand, not toward the sword, but toward empty space. “And you.”

The air crackled with a blinding white flash of essence, and a spear appeared in his hand. Not any spear, but
the
spear—the one that had disappeared when I closed the gate into TirNaNog. The spear had bonded to me, to my body signature back then. It operated by some arcane set of rules no one knew. Vize had bonded with it, also, and, for some reason, it preferred him to me at that moment.