Unfallen Dead

CHAPTER 1

When I find myself walking through dark, unlit hallways in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night, it means one of two things: I am on my way to an after-hours party — or to a death. Since Detective Lieutenant Leonard Murdock wasn’t prone to inviting me to parties, I knew the only music I’d be hearing shortly was the squawk of police radios.

When Murdock called me out of a nice, quiet dive down on Stillings Street because he had something interesting for me, I didn’t think it meant feeling like a rat in a maze. The warehouse had been easy enough to find because of the police and ambulance out front. Once inside, though, I made a wrong turn and found myself wandering a series of corridors that led back onto themselves.

I put my cell phone to my ear. “Which way, Murdock?”

“I have no idea, Connor. Get to a window and tell me what you see,” he said.

Amusement colored his voice. I knew what he was thinking. Connor Grey, the great druid and former investigator for the Fey Guild, had gotten himself lost. In a building. Surrounded by police officers. With cell phones and radios. I may no longer have the ability to manipulate essence on a grand scale, but I didn’t think I’d lost my sense of direction, too.

Using the silvery blue glow from the cell phone as a flashlight, I managed to find a window with frosted chicken-wire glass. I pushed at the frame, but years of paint refused to budge. I swore under my breath and put the phone down. Breaking the glass wouldn’t help because of the safety mesh. It’s moments like this that I find particularly frustrating.

I used to have the power to do things humans could only dream of. Essence made it possible, the essence in everything, including myself. The superstitious call it magic. I’ve had some mystical moments, especially lately, but in general I don’t tend toward that kind of thinking. I like things to make sense, to be able to quantify them and apply rules. Essence is no exception.

Back in the day, I manipulated essence and caused it to flow out of my hands, my body — even my eyes — and it did things I intended it to do. Good things and bad things, but powerful things either way. Not anymore. Since the accident that caused the loss of most of my abilities, a dark mass in my brain blocks me from doing what I used to be able to do. Painfully so.

“Are you there?” Murdock’s voice sounded tinny in the small phone’s speaker.

“Yeah.” I had probably been stuck on the same floor for twenty minutes. I decided enough was enough and didn’t want the further humiliation of asking Murdock to send someone to find me.

Everyone has body essence to a different degree depending on their species. I can still access my own to an extent, but the thing in my head kicked up a storm of pain when I did. I avoided it most times. I put my hand on the window frame and shot a quick burst of body essence into it. Several things happened simultaneously. The window cracked; the frame cracked; and I’m pretty sure my head cracked. I clutched my temples as a searing pain shot behind my eyes.

“Connor?” Murdock’s voice was now flat with police concern.

I picked up the phone. “I’m good.” I pushed the window up, fighting its years of inertia, and stuck my head out. “I’m on the third floor, looking at an air shaft.”

“Hold on.”

The full moon sent a faint light into the shaft, illuminating it enough for me to see another window ten feet across the way. I craned my head up and saw more windows. The silhouette of a head leaned out above me.

Murdock’s voice echoed from behind me on the phone and above me in the shaft. “I see you. You need to come up two floors. There’s a stairwell about fifty feet to the right as you face the air shaft.”

I startled at a cold touch on the back of my neck. Jumping back from the window, I dropped the phone. The blue screen winked out. Complete darkness surrounded me. I crouched and picked up the phone, feeling cracks on the screen. It didn’t light up at my touch. I’d managed to disconnect Murdock, too.

Something moved in the dark, soft and silent. I sensed more than heard it. I slid to the side of the open window so that my head wouldn’t be a nice handy target against the dim moonlight behind me. When you’re in a dark building with a dead body, you think of these things. I stilled my breath, listening. Nothing moved, at least nothing that I could hear. An afterimage of light from the air shaft cluttered my vision, but I couldn’t see anything in the darkness anyway. I opened my essence-sensing ability, trying to perceive whether anyone was in the room with me. As a druid, I was naturally good at sensing essence. I was better at it than most. It was one of the few remaining abilities I had.

Faint white light coalesced in my inner vision, faint hints of ambient essence creating the shape of the hallway. Here and there along the edges of the floor, pinpricks of light showed evidence of insects, probably roaches. I made out the pathway. I stepped to the left toward the stubbornly hidden stairwell. Two doors opened to the right, dark and empty. As I passed the second one, cool air fluttered over me.

I froze. Just inside the door, essence shimmered in the shape of a man. His indistinct face looked stricken, strange creases crisscrossing his forehead like deep worry lines. He lifted a hand toward me, an innocuous gesture that, under the circumstances, made me recoil.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Confused, he peered at his hand. Blinking slowly, he tilted his head and stretched his hand toward me again. He took a step, then evaporated like pale smoke in the dark. Gone. Even his essence was gone. He wasn’t there, but he had to be. It’s nearly impossible to mask your essence completely, especially from me. I focused my sensing ability tighter, like turning up a dial, but still couldn’t register him. I held my hands out to ward him off if he came at me. Flattening myself against the wall, I slid away from the empty doorway, glancing quickly to the left to be sure I was going the right way, waiting for him to jump me. At the end of the hall, I realized why I kept missing the stairwell. An odd jog in the wall made the hall seem like it was a dead end. I stepped around the partition, pressing myself against the opposite side. I took shallow breaths, straining to hear if I was being followed.

A bright light shone in my eyes, and I startled. The light found me again, and someone said, “Connor Grey?”

Embarrassed, I held my hand up against the beam. “Yeah?”

The flashlight swept down, and a puzzled young police officer observed me in the backwash of the light. “Detective Murdock sent me down to get you.”

Murdock was not going to let me hear the end of this. I pointed into the darkness of the hall. “There’s someone down here.”

The kid’s training kicked in, and he went for his gun. In that coordinated way police have, he held the flashlight focused into the hallway and used the same hand to call for backup on the radio on his shoulder. I stepped behind him out of the way. I may be able to hold my own in a fight, but I had no idea what the mystery man had with him. Being cautious wasn’t the same thing as being afraid.

“Stairwell’s right behind us,” the officer said in a low voice. I backed into it and heard the clatter of running feet on the stairs above me. Another officer joined us, gun drawn.

I leaned away from the door to let him pass. “He’s all yours, guys. First door on the left is where I saw him.”

I mounted the stairs. Police officers get flashlights with their uniforms. I forget that not every building is going to have electricity. One long flight up, white light spilled into the stairwell. In my rush up the stairs, I had turned off a couple of floors too soon.

At the landing, the fifth floor opened as a wide space. The warehouse had been used for some kind of manufacturing, uniform workstations marching across the floor in two rows. I didn’t recognize the rusted machinery, some of it obviously vandalized, all of it coated with dust. About halfway down the aisle between the rows, several police officers with flashlights gathered in a circle. The beams of almost blue light arced in the dark space whenever someone moved.

As my footsteps crackled against the dirty floor, Murdock’s half-shadowed face turned in my direction. He gave me a faint smile, the one he reserves for those moments when my dignity has taken a hit. “Nice to see you.”

I twisted my mouth into a smile. “You could have left bread crumbs for me to follow.”

“Hey, I sent help. It’s not like I just left you lying on a tomb somewhere.”

Murdock and I have had a little disagreement as to the appropriate course of action I had taken on our last big case. “I told you, Murdock, the paramedics were there. I checked your essence before I left. You were fine.”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded toward the center of attention. I joined the group to check out my latest potential paycheck. When I lost my abilities and the Guild kicked me out, I picked up consulting gigs with the Boston P.D. They’re not always equipped to handle cases involving elves or fairies, or most other kinds of fey from Faerie. I know a lot, so they call. At least Murdock does. Hence, paycheck.

While Murdock and the officers held their lights on the body, I crouched for a closer look. An emaciated man lay sprawled on his back, his head smooth of hair. Not shaved. You can tell a naturally bald man. Someone who shaves his head gets a five-o’clock shadow. I’d seen it on myself recently. A few weeks earlier, I had lost all my hair in the backlash of a major spell. It started growing back immediately, but I wore a black knit cap against the late October chill. The dead guy didn’t look like he was into a daily hygiene routine that included shaving.

Carved across his forehead was the reason Murdock called. Someone had used a sharp object, a knife being most likely, to make a horizontal gash from temple to temple. Across the sharp line of the gash, several hash marks had been made. Ogham runes, six of them, the old alphabet of the Celts. Deep red marks split the skin with little blood, which meant they were probably made postmortem. The victim’s lingering body essence tickled at my senses, and I pulled back in surprise.

Murdock caught my movement. “What’s wrong?”

I frowned. “I just saw this guy downstairs.”

Murdock shook his head. “Not possible. I’ve been here at least an hour. He’s been here longer.”

I pursed my lips. “Have they found anyone downstairs?”

Murdock jutted his chin at one of the officers, who muttered into his radio. A static of muddled words came back, and he shook his head.

Interesting. A puzzle piece for the investigation. Turning my attention back to the body, I sensed that the guy was a human normal. Nothing about him registered as fey. If he were someone from Faerie, his essence would have resonated differently. By the look of his soiled and rumpled pants and thin jacket, I’d guess he had been homeless. He could have been anywhere from late thirties to early fifties. It’s hard to tell with guys like him, who’ve had years of living on the street to ravage their features.

The runes on his forehead gave a faint indication of essence. Someone used a spell as they carved them. With yet another jolt of surprise, I realized it had been done by a druid. Essence in and of itself has vague differences based on its source. It’s why certain fey were better at manipulating certain essences than others. Druids were attuned to organics, fairies to ambient air, and so on. Sensing who or what species actually used a particular essence was a separate ability, one I didn’t normally have. A few species, like trolls, could do it — and I had had recent close contact with a troll. I had thought the residual impact of that encounter had dissipated finally, and made a mental note to have myself checked out.

I stood. “It’s a safe bet you’re looking for a druid.”

Murdock directed his flashlight toward the guy’s head. “We’re not seeing any obvious trauma. Could those marks have killed him?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure they were done after he was dead.”

“What do they mean?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. Easy translation is ‘The way denied.’ It’s got a spell wrapped in it, too, so that could change the meaning. I’ll have to research it. How long has he been here?”

Murdock inspected the rest of the room with his flashlight. “Probably a few hours. Medical examiner should be here soon. We need a generator, too.”

The body had fallen with his right arm beneath him. As I walked around the other side, I noted the fingernails on his left hand were blackened. “Can someone shine a light on his shoes?”

Several someones did. Sure enough, the cheap leather had burnt toes. I lifted one of the victim’s eyelids. My stomach did a little flip at the sight of his destroyed eyes. I backed away, wiping my hand on my pants. “He was killed by essence shock. Someone hit him with a major charge and short-circuited his system. He probably died of a heart attack or organ damage.”

Murdock directed his flashlight toward the back of the floor. “Looks like his crib’s back there.”

We walked from the body, the essences of the officers fading away from my senses. The residual essences of the dead man and his druid assailant trailed all the way back to the corner of the room. An old mattress was on the floor under a workbench. Murdock’s flashlight revealed the basics of a squat, a meager collection of personal-care products, several books, candles, a few canned goods. Nothing that would be terribly missed if he were robbed while out on the street. It didn’t look disturbed.

Another stairwell opened at the rear of the room. We stepped on the landing, Murdock shining the beam down the stairs. Nothing to be seen but years’ accumulation of crumbled debris. The druid essence was more distinct. The killer had lingered here, long enough to leave some residual body essence for me to register her gender. Something about it tugged at my awareness, like searching for a word I knew but couldn’t place.

I looked back to the body. “The killer was a druidess. She waited here for a while. She either hit him with essence from here when he was coming in the other way, or she spooked him out of his sleep and hit him as he ran off. Who called it in?”

Even in the half-lit dark, the sour twist to Murdock’s mouth was evident. “Nine one one. Anonymous.”

Anonymous, the most common surname in the Weird. It’s the Boston neighborhood where the fey go when they’re down-and-out. No one ever saw anything or heard anything in the Weird. I can’t blame folks down here, though. When you had no place else to go and ended up in the Weird, you didn’t want someone more powerful than you breathing down your neck. You had no place else to run except the grave, and most people avoided that. After I lost everything in my life, I moved into the Weird. The implication that I have nowhere else bothers me sometimes.

Something crunched underfoot. The glow of Murdock’s flashlight reflected off a small and shiny object. I picked up a piece of gold worked in a spiral. Sparkles of essence flickered and died on it, leaving me the same vague sense of someone familiar.

Murdock tilted his flashlight toward me. “Find something?”

I rubbed the piece between my thumb and index finger. “Piece of jewelry, I think. I’ll play with it and see if it’s from our druidess.”

Back by the body, a gleam of essence caught my eye. I inhaled sharply. “What the hell?”

“What?” Murdock swung his light as I strode back to the crime scene. A strange flicker of essence neared the body.

“I think he’s still alive, Murdock.” As I approached, the essence vanished.

I stopped short. Murdock came up beside me. “He’s dead, Connor. I don’t need your sensing ability to know that.”

“I saw something.”

Judging by Murdock’s expression, I must have looked as confused as I felt. “Are you okay?”

I rubbed my hands over my face and adjusted the knit cap. “Yeah. Maybe I’m just tired.”

Murdock nodded. “We’ll let the forensic guys take care of the rest. Come on. I’ll give you a ride back to your place.”

I scanned the body once more but sensed nothing. Maybe I had seen some overlapping essence from the officers around the body. Even with experience, the dual vision of essence and normal sight could be confusing.

We went down the front stairwell. On the ground floor, the medical examiner brushed by, looking none too happy to be roused in the middle of the night for a homeless guy. He didn’t bother to acknowledge us.

I opened the passenger door to Murdock’s car and dropped myself onto the pile of newspapers on the seat. Murdock pulled a U-turn and drove onto Old Northern Avenue. The main drag of the neighborhood had the calm of late night, only a car or two coasting along. Even the Weird quieted down at night eventually. The streetwalkers and spell dealers gave up and went home. The partiers stumbled into the decrepit backseats of cabs. The only people still out and about were the die-hard and the desperate.

Murdock didn’t say anything, and for once I thought he might actually be tired. The man’s a machine and puts in more hours than I want to think about. He pulled up in front of my apartment. “I’ll let you know if we get an ID.”

I let myself out. “I’ll look into the runes, see if it’s a spell that’ll tell us anything.”

He leaned across the seat. “Get some sleep first. You look like hell.”

As I walked up the four flights to my apartment, I couldn’t shake the image of the dead guy. I knew I’d seen his essence before I’d seen his body. I wasn’t that tired. It didn’t make sense. When someone dies, their life essence vanishes. Period. I’d seen it happen enough times. The old faith said we went on to our afterlife in TirNaNog and didn’t come back. Dead is dead.

I entered my apartment, noting the faint odor of old coffee and empty beer bottles doing battle with fresh laundry and Pine-Sol. Home smells. I’m not the best housekeeper and can’t afford one. I did my best but let the dust bunnies roam where they will.

I was tired. Too many late nights and too many bars were catching up with me. Maybe Murdock was right. Seeing dead guys walking around dark, empty warehouses might be a sign it was time to get some sleep.