Unperfect Souls (37 page)

I took advantage of Vize’s indecision and ran toward him again. As I did, a burst of Danann essence swept above me, and Guild security agents dove from behind. They skimmed over the pavement in front of me, outpacing me. In one smooth motion, they grabbed Vize by the arms and swept him into the air.

I stopped running, facing the Hound. He relaxed his fighting stance and stared at me over the swaddling of a scarf across his face. I was close enough finally for his essence to register in my vision, coalescing into a familiar, yet changed, body signature. My jaw dropped in recognition as he sheathed the sword and leaped into a shattered window in the building next to him. I shouted, my frustration echoing through the empty alley. Gone.

And so was Vize. I had lost him again.

 

 

 

 

With the wail of its siren, the fire truck surged by the end of the alley as I reached the street. Murdock perched on the top of the truck with Gerry slumped against his side. The truck vanished into a billowing cloud of smoke. The Dead and the solitaries continued fighting in a fog of the Taint. I skirted the side of a building and ran back to Eorla’s car. Rand kept watch outside. Behind him, the firestorm had abated, a building lying in ruins on each side of the street. I surprised myself with a small prayer of thanks when I saw Eorla in the car. She was okay. I jumped in the back as Rand took the driver’s seat. Eorla reached over and held my hand.

“Vize was captured by Guild security agents,” I said. Rand didn’t wait for Eorla to respond and hit the gas.

A bright pink flash illuminated the interior of the car. Joe shouted as inertia kicked in and zipped him backwards through the car. He hit the rear window and tumbled to the floor as Rand slammed on the brakes. Eorla and I lurched forward. Joe shot into the console between the front seats and fell to the floor again. Seeing we weren’t in danger, Rand hit the gas. Joe pushed himself up with a dazed look on his face. “Meryl didn’t mention you were in a moving car,” he said.

“Where is she, Joe? Is she all right?”

He shook his shaggy head like a dog. “She’s fine. She’s fine. Some chrome-domes were hassling her at your place, but I put an end to that, I’ll tell you. You should have seen them when I was done with them. Actually, you couldn’t see them when I was done because they flew off like little baby birds being chased by a . . . a . . . a littler bird, right? A littler scary bird with a sword . . .”

Eorla cleared her throat.

“Joe, this is Grand Duchess Eorla Kruge Elvendottir of the Elven King’s Court. Eorla, this is Joe Stinkwort. He’s an old friend,” I said.

She held her hand out to him. “I am pleased to meet you, Master Stinkwort. You sound most formidable.”

Joe managed to stand. He examined her hand suspiciously, then touched his forehead to it. “Pleasure, m’lady. And it’s Joe Flit, if you don’t mind.”

“Where’s Meryl?” I asked.

He stepped onto the seat to peer out the window. “I’d say about four blocks ahead.”

Over his head, I met Eorla’s eyes. “We need to go get her.”

Eorla tilted her head. “I don’t think that’s wise, Connor. The Guild’s command center is set up at the end of the bridge. I can assert my rank down by the power plant, but you may end up in their hands if we go back.”

I gestured toward the fighting blocking the street. “That’s not an alternate route.”

“The Oh No bridge is still there,” said Joe. “The steel’s warped a little, but the trolls couldn’t do anything with it.”

“Then we’ll run the bridge if we have to,” I said.

Eorla shook her head. “You’re not making this easy.”

“I don’t care. Tell Meryl we’re coming, Joe,” I said. He winked out.

Rand chanted in the front seat. A shroud of essence poured out of him and enveloped the car. He shifted his tone, and the barrier spell compressed around the car.

Eorla sighed. “Alvud would be disappointed to see this.”

I gently squeezed her hand. Anything I said would be trite to the ears of a widow of a centuries- long marriage. She didn’t withdraw her hand, which was enough to tell me I was right. Silence in the face of grief can be as powerful as words.

Something hit the back of the car, and Eorla clenched my hand. The car lifted on its front wheels and skittered forward. Sparks flew across the windshield as metal met pavement. The car slammed down onto the street and lurched to a stop. Rand accelerated, but we didn’t move. “I believe the axle’s broken, ma’am,” he said.

I looked up out the window. “That was a Danann blast. They’re shooting at anything.”

Eorla opened her door. The fires had not yet spread that far up the street, but fey folk were moving toward us fast. Rand took Eorla’s arm as we struggled through sidewalks obstructed by compacted ice and piles of plowed snow. We took to the street to make faster progress.

No one had any reservations about throwing essence at us. The Taint did that, stripped people of their reason and goaded them into baser aggressions. Even fairies and elves unaffiliated with solitaries and the Dead were firing on us. The oppressive pressure on the neighborhood from the Guild and the police had exploded, and the Taint gave license to express bottled-up rage.

The Old Northern Avenue bridge became visible. Haze from the fires shifted in the arcs of searchlights and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. The patter of gunfire echoed down alleys, but no one armed came our way. Yet. The slow steady bursts of tank gunfire rumbled from the south.

A small figure dressed in black strode down the middle of the road. I didn’t need to see Joe’s pink essence light swirling around her to recognize her. Meryl didn’t change her pace when she realized it was me, but the moment we were close enough, she threw her arms around me. She eyed Eorla up and down. “Your daring escape skills need some sharpening, Eorla. We should do lunch.”

Eorla didn’t rise to the bait. “Agreed. At the moment, however, we need to keep the rioters from overtaking us and the Guild from arresting Connor.”

Meryl looked down the street at the burning warehouses. “On the plus side, with this fire, I’m not chilly anymore.”

The smoke haze obscured a clear view of the Old Northern Avenue bridge. “Joe, do some recon ahead, then see if we can get out past Summer Street.”

He winked away. And blinked back. “What’s recon?”

“The bridge, Joe. See what’s happening on the bridge,” I said. He saluted and vanished again.

I turned to Eorla. “Can your dwarf friends hide us?”

She shook her head. “The plan was for them to disappear. They’re long gone by now.”

Meryl grabbed my arm. Back toward the bridge, tanks rumbled out of the alleys and swiveled onto Old Northern. National Guardsmen followed on foot, shielding themselves behind trucks and the tanks as they spread out and took positions across the road. In a matter of moments, hundreds of weapons were pointed at us. Behind, the rioting fey churned their way toward us in a maelstrom of dark green Taint. Solitaries backed toward us as the Dead pressed them toward the bridge. And the guns and the tanks.

“This is going to be a slaughter,” I said.

Eorla gazed up at the sky, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the Taint. She faced Meryl. “You know we can stop this.”

Meryl frowned. “Do I?”

Calm as ever, as if we were not about to be crushed between competing factions, Eorla casually folded her arms. “You did it at Forest Hills. You collapsed the Celtic half of the spell.”

Meryl shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

Eorla moved closer to her. “That’s because you didn’t do it. The drys did. You were the means to an end. We can do the same thing here.”

“Wait a minute. I thought
I
collapsed the spell,” I said.

Eorla shook her head. “I thought so, too, at first, but after examining the runes, I realized you didn’t. You grounded all the essence by anchoring it with stone.”

“I created a short circuit,” I said.

She nodded. “And dissipated the excess essence that the spell had produced. Nigel and I provided a window of opportunity for you to do it. We would have failed if the drys had not collapsed the Celtic side of the spell. She used Meryl as a conduit to channel her counterspell. Even together, Nigel and I did not have the power to hold all that essence at bay and negate the Teutonic half of the spell. We took care of the immediate problem—we held back the essence and gave you time.”

She pointed into the vibrant green sky. “The Taint is the remnant of the Teutonic half of the spell. I reconstructed the rune sequence. We can get the rioters under control by removing the Taint from them. I can do that if I stop the Taint.”

“That’s a big if,” I said.

She stared at the approaching mayhem. “I do not think I can live with what might happen otherwise.”

“Then use me,” I said.

Eorla shook her head. “I do not know what effect your damaged abilities will have. We must use a pure vessel.”

My gut clenched. I’d heard the phrase “pure vessel” the night the Taint was created. It was what the drys called Meryl. Everyone else had been touched by the Taint. Meryl moved several feet away from us. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” she said.

“Nothing more than what I am asking of myself,” Eorla said to her back.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Time after time, Meryl reminded me that I gave her choices that were not choices. I didn’t know what I wanted her to do this time. What Eorla was suggesting was dangerous. I saw what had happened when the drys used Meryl as a conduit. It was terrifying. I had no idea what the Taint would do to her.

Meryl came to me, and we hugged.
Promise me you will kick her ass if I die,
she sent. I kissed the top of her head. “Hers won’t be the only one,” I said.

She inhaled deeply and pushed me away. “Let’s do this before I change my mind.”

Eorla placed her hands on Meryl’s shoulders from behind. She closed her eyes and chanted in Old Elvish, the sounds harsh to the modern ear, but in Eorla’s voice, it sounded both soft and mournful. Meryl’s skin bleached to white as essence welled up from within, her body becoming sheathed in a vibrant halo. Eorla’s cadence shifted, her voice growing stronger with the power of her song. Pinpoints of light appeared, dancing around Meryl like green fireflies. Faster and faster they spun, growing larger with each circuit of her body. They shifted and bent, forming shapes in response to Eorla’s voice. They flickered brighter and resolved into the angular shapes of Teutonic runes.

Joe popped back in. “Whoa! What the hell are they doing?”

“I’ll explain later. Who’s on the bridge?” I asked.

He swooped around me, keeping his eyes on Eorla and Meryl. “It’s a war party up there. That Frye guy from the Consortium, macGoren. Lots of security agents from both the Consortium and the Guild. And”—he eyed me significantly—“a bunch of chrome-domes just brought Vize in.”

The air vibrated as Eorla pulled more essence from her surroundings and funneled it into the rune spell. The dark mass in my head spiked into a ball of claws as her essence touched our surroundings. My eyes watered as I struggled to hold in the darkness. Moving away didn’t help. The desire to touch Eorla’s powerful essence burned in my gut. The dark mass moved, spreading inside me, hungering to cross the distance between Eorla and me.

I clenched my jaw, refusing to let the darkness free. It wanted the essence. It wanted Eorla and Meryl. It wanted too much. I pushed back against it with my mind. My left arm flared with cold as the tattoo burned on the surface of my skin. The dark mass didn’t retreat, but it paused. I stepped farther back. My stomach churned. I almost didn’t care if I did interfere, if I reached out and touched them, touched the luscious reams of essence coursing from them.

A wind sprang up, biting and cold. Essence circled Meryl and Eorla in vibrant streams of green and blue and white. Meryl trembled as the runes swept around her. Her head fell back, the cords in her neck straining against the power coursing through her. The light in her face pulsed and flared and obliterated her features.

Eorla shouted above the rising wind. Clenching the back of Meryl’s neck, she thrust her other hand up. A surge of blue-white light leaped from her palm, pure essence fanning across the sky, crackling with power and piercing the clouds of Taint. The rioters paused in confusion as the green haze rippled. The wind rose to a gale, spinning the Taint into a whirlpool of sickly green light. A funnel formed beneath it, dancing in the air like an appendage groping for contact. It lashed like the tail of an angry beast and plunged into Meryl.

The Taint poured down. The funnel sucked it out of the sky and more shreds of green haze gathered from all directions. Meryl convulsed with shock as the Taint coursed through her. Eorla sang higher, her song becoming a roar of power. The Taint surged out of Meryl, along Eorla’s arm and flooded her body. The dark mass in my head contracted abruptly. It had never liked the Taint, had avoided it as much as the Taint avoided the darkness. I stumbled toward the bridge but the pain refused to subside. With the amount of essence powering in, no place within walking distance would be far enough.

Everything stopped. An utter silence hung over the street. Eorla and Meryl swayed on their feet. I searched the sky and found nothing but ambient essence. I didn’t sense Taint anywhere. They had done it. Eorla and Meryl had done it. The Taint was gone.

Up the street, the fey folk broke into a babble of confusion. I jogged toward Meryl and Eorla. Rand rushed to Eorla’s side as she stumbled and fell, and Meryl crumpled to the ground at the same time. I threw myself onto my knees beside her and pulled her to my chest.

“Meryl?”

Her head lolled to the side, her eyes glazed and sight-less. I grabbed her chin and turned her face toward mine. I shook her gently. “Meryl? Answer me.”