Unperfect Souls (27 page)

“Does it have a will of its own?” I asked. The question had been gnawing at me for months. The idea that something alive, maybe even malevolent, was in my mind sickened me. Sometimes the dark mass seemed alive and aware, moving in ways that were more than autonomic responses. Sometimes it seemed to protect itself. Sometimes it seemed to protect me. It prevented me from accessing my abilities yet absorbed essence that was thrown at me. On Samhain, it devoured the essence of several Dead people.

Confused, Druse cocked her head to the side. “It is the Wheel, my brother. The will of the Wheel is the will of the World.”

The Wheel of the World. I believed in the existence of the Wheel. It wasn’t a faith in the same way others believed in gods. It was an acceptance of a philosophy and understanding of the world. Some people thought of it as fate, the inexorable unfolding of what is meant to be. For me, it was an eternal now—a constant present that moved from moment to moment, becoming the present even as it became the past. In short, shit happens, and you have to roll with it.

I groped for words. “It’s not a person.”

Druse tangled her fingers in her hair and scratched at her head. “It is the lack. It is the Wheel the others deny.”

I pursed my lips. “The others—do you mean the solitaries or people who aren’t like . . . us?”

She rubbed at her face. “You confuse Druse, my brother. We all touch the light, but the others, it blinds them to its lack.” She pulled her knees up and stared at me. “Only such as we, the chosen of the Wheel, touch the whole of it.”

Essence. She was talking about essence, the light of the Wheel, the force that permeates everything. The fey manipulated it. Their ability to manipulate it defined them as fey. But Druse was talking about something else, something other that existed, too. “Can you work this . . . this lack of essence, Druse? Is that what you do? Like the others manipulate essence?”

Her eyes teared. “Oh, my brother, we are kin, we are. Stay with me, brother. We are not like them. We are apart. We shall bring joy to each other here.”

Not my first choice for retirement. “Show me what you do.”

A joy spread across her face with a slash of gray teeth. She jumped from the chair and tugged at my knee. “This way, brother. First, we reach the safe place. The Wheel is not always kind.”

I followed her to the fissure in the wall, which was wide enough for me to step through sideways. On the other side, an empty chamber rose two stories, empty except for a heaving of dark gray bedrock in the center. On the outcropping, an oval ward stone about a foot wide rested, glowing with essence. More traditional obelisk wards ringed the natural pedestal, protecting the ward stone behind a thin barrier field.

Druse approached the field. “You have a bowl, brother, yes?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

She trotted back to me and patted my left arm, clenching my forearm up and down its length. “Here, ah, not a bowl, no. Something different, but the same. Good, good. Nice to carry it in you. Druse should like that. You should show Druse how to make such as this.”

The tattoo on my arm tingled as she probed at it through the sleeve. I gently pulled away from her. “Show me yours, Druse.”

I bit back a nervous chuckle at the reminder of the “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours” game that children play. Despite wanting to know how her abilities worked, that particular situation wasn’t a line I was willing to cross.

She pinched my sleeve between two fingers. Her essence slipped over my arm, not a full envelope, but enough to allow the wards on the ground to recognize me. The dark mass shifted in my head as we entered the contained haze of essence around the stone pedestal. My ears popped from a sudden pressure against the inside of my skull.

Druse trailed around the pedestal, staring at me, waiting for a reaction. On the natural outcropping sat a rough-worked ward stone shaped like a bowl, a rich green color with dark red splotches. Heliotrope, an ancient jasper stone used for a variety of rituals, mostly involving healing and balance. The spots gave it its more dramatic name: bloodstone.

“This is beautiful, Druse. Where did you get it?”

She placed her hands to either side of the stone and rubbed at it. Essence pooled inside, a silvered white that coiled and swirled like liquid clouds. “It’s mine, brother. She gave it to me, didn’t she? Long ago. She had no need of it anymore. I found it and kept it.”

Sounded like an interesting story, rife with contradiction. And beside the point. “What do you do with it?”

She dipped two fingers in and withdrew them dripping with the translucent essence. “Save it to save Druse. In the slack time, the danger time, when they seek Druse, the bowl feeds and nurtures. They will seek you, my brother, and bring you harm. You must hide then, hide and wait and drink from the bowl to live.”

I paced around the pedestal, Druse mimicking my steps on the opposite side. “Where does the essence come from?”

“It gives it, it does. Druse gives to it, and it returns tenfold. It is a good thing, no?” she said.

A fine quality piece of jasper that beautiful was worth a fortune. That it was some kind of capacitor and amplifier ward pushed its price off the charts. Something this big could potentially output unlimited essence over time. I allowed myself a small smile. Now I understood what Zev meant the night Murdock vanished. He said to tell Jark the solitaries didn’t have what he was seeking. The bowl in front of me was a powerful artifact, the kind that could have only come originally from Faerie. And it was sitting in an unguarded room with a simple barrier field around it. A fey with moderate abilities could collapse Druse’s shield. Sekka’s body had been found nearby. She must have been guarding it. “You leave it out like this?”

She laughed, a raspy bark of sound. “No one can touch Druse’s bowl. Try it, my brother. Try to take it.”

I reached out a hesitant hand. A hot burning sensation ran down my right arm from the dark mass in my head, and a cold constriction pulsed through the tattoo on my left forearm. I’ve learned those are warnings of more pain. Before the silver tattoo appeared, the dark mass in my head rejected external essence and contained my own inherent essence within me. It was why I couldn’t touch my abilities. The silver tattoo seemed to want the opposite, hungering for essence and releasing it. Something about the bowl was confusing both of them.

An electric static ran over me when I touched the stone. Nothing more painful than surprise. I put my other hand on the opposite side and tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge. Not a fraction of an inch. I dropped my hands. “Is it bonded to the bedrock?”

Druse laughed as if I had made an incredible joke. She lifted the bowl off the pedestal with no more effort than necessary for its weight. She replaced it. “Only the pure can take the bowl, my brother, and only the unpure ever seek it.”

I frowned. I might not have the best moral record going, but I liked to think I was at least several notches above a
leanansidhe
. “The pure,” I said.

She ducked her head, caressing the side of the bowl. “Yes, yes, of course. The pure, the innocent, the chaste, my brother.”

Pure and innocent meant one thing, but in the same sentence with the word “chaste,” their meanings shifted in one direction. “Are you telling me only a virgin can move it?”

Druse clutched her hands in excitement and brought them to her lips. “You are my brother, my brother. You see true. Druse will protect you in need. Druse will let you use the bowl in need.”

My responding chuckle confused Druse, but finding a virgin geasa in a hole in the ground in a modern city was so surreal, I had to laugh. The geasa bans were powerful taboos, hard to create and harder to break. The virgin geasa served many purposes, the least of which a pretty good indicator of how few virgins there were around. In the old days—the real old days—virginity was something lost almost as soon as puberty was gained. I wondered if Druse ever heard of teen abstinence programs. I knew that the failure rate for them was high, but there had to be a danger of at least one naïve teen who didn’t know everyone else was lying.

“What does this have to do with the darkness, Druse?”

Her hand trembled over the bowl. Purple essence welled up from within her, coating her fingers. It undulated across her palm, forming bumps that stretched and grew into wormlike tendrils. They waved in the air then dipped toward the essence. Druse closed her eyes and parted her lips as the tendrils drew up the essence. Something moved within her, an oozing behind her essence, a darkness that called to the thing in my mind.

I swayed with a touch of vertigo as the burning sensation in my right arm tightened and stretched. Druse gasped as her darkness touched the silvered essence from the bowl. The essence vanished, enveloped in darkness, no intermediate mingling or change. Just gone.

I clenched my jaw in pain as a sharp blade of darkness pierced my palm. The blade had no substance, a solid shadow that snaked and twined itself around Druse’s fingers. The sharp tip cut through her body signature, and a hot pleasure ran through me as I sensed her essence like a flavor in my mind. Druse slumped against the pedestal with a groan. The thing from my hand moved deeper, and the darkness within her rose to meet it. The two modes of darkness touched in a burst of black shadow. I shouted and wrenched my arm away, my silvered tattoo blazing through my jacket as the dark thing whipped back into my hand. I tripped backwards and fell, red and white lights flashing in my eyes.

Druse leaned over me. “My brother?” she whispered, her voice a raspy tremble.

She reached for my face. I shoved her away. “Don’t touch me.”

She cowered back, an uncertain smile flickering on and off her lips. “It is fine, my brother. The Wheel’s touch burns with ignorance at first, but in time it cuts with joy. You are strong, my brother. Druse slept many days after her first touch.”

I grabbed the edge of the pedestal and pulled myself up. “What did you do to me?”

Druse yanked at her hair. “Nothing, my brother! You asked to see. We are akin. We touch the light and bring the lack. It is the Way of the Wheel.”

I rubbed my arms. They were sore with the pain of heat and cold. “Can it be controlled?”

Druse crawled behind the pedestal and raised her head above the bowl. “The solitaires seek Druse, and Druse must answer. Enough for today, my brother. Return again and learn.”

She cloaked herself and vanished. Her essence trail faded into the far end of the chamber where the light didn’t reach. She was gone. I examined my hands and found smooth unbroken skin. My sensing ability traced a faded area in the middle of my right hand that wasn’t there before. Tiny flashes of silver essence winked here and there along my fingers. Bits of jasper from the bowl had attached themselves to me. In spite of the pain, I pushed my body essence against them, and they sifted to the floor like fine dust.

I backed away, not turning until I reached the room’s exit. My chest constricted as I strode away from Druse’s room. I wasn’t going to be stomach sick this time. As I wound through the tunnels to the exit above, my face burned with a feverish warmth. Yearning desire raced through me, my skin tingling with an almost carnal hunger for more of what happened—to savor and, yes, devour essence as if it were the only thing I needed for sustenance. The sensation of that moment had a kick like a chemical high, only deeper and more profound, as if nothing else would matter if I could have it again. It felt wrong, corrupt. In the cold slap of the winter air outside, I refused to release the shocked emotion hovering inside me. What had happened felt wrong.

I wanted to go back even as I staggered away.

 

 

 

 

All the next morning I nursed the mother of hangovers, the combined effects of alcohol and the flood of essence I had absorbed in Druse’s chamber. The pounding in my head left little room to think of much else for hours. As the cloud of pain lifted, I debated calling Murdock, trying to decide if it would be pushing him to talk when he obviously didn’t want to, or if he wasn’t talking because he wanted me to push. It’s hard to read him sometimes. As I sat on the subway train, I checked my cell, scrolling through the caller ID in case I had missed his call. I hadn’t.

The train stopped at Boylston Street, and I got out with several students. I lingered behind them as we neared the stairs. When I was sure no one was paying attention, I slipped into the train tunnel. About fifty feet in, the barrier between inbound and outbound tracks ended, and I crossed over to the opposite side. Hopping onto the narrow concrete ledge, I listened to the distant, hollow sound of a train. I had plenty of time before it arrived. At regular intervals, shallow niches opened in the concrete walls, safety spots for transit workers to stand if they were caught on the tracks when a train approached. I reached one shallower than the others and walked into the concrete wall.

The wall let me through, a static resistance running over my body as I slipped to the other side. Feeling along the edge of the first step leading down, I found the small flashlight Meryl had promised to leave for me. I turned the light on and descended the stone stairs. At the bottom, I turned right into a long, narrow tunnel. Sometimes it was lined with bricks or granite blocks, sometimes with bedrock. Few people knew that an entire network of tunnels existed under the streets of Boston. Meryl made sure no one knew about this one, her secret way out of the Guildhouse.

Light appeared ahead, and I turned off the flashlight. The end of the tunnel gave a transparent view into Meryl’s office. An archway framed the desk area where she was working, seemingly oblivious to my approach. I knew better. No one sneaks up on Meryl Dian.
We’re clear. Come on through,
she sent.

I slipped through another field of static into her office. From her perspective, it looked like I had emerged from a solid wall. I sat in the messy guest chair as she finished reading something on her computer. She swiveled toward me. “Sorry. Minor catastrophe with the network.”