Unfallen Dead

CHAPTER 28

I tried not to laugh at Dylan’s dazed expression. “Make a decision, partner. She moves pretty fast.”

He jumped. There was no question whether I would follow. The drop wasn’t long, but I flubbed the landing in the dark. Meryl lit a small ball of blue light above her palm. “Took you long enough. She went this way.”

Dylan and I followed as she jogged into the darkness. The tunnel was like the one off Meryl’s office, a low and narrow corridor of granite. We moved without speaking, passing openings that breathed air over us, sometimes cool, sometimes warm. I opened my sensing ability, the dark mass in my head not objecting. Not long ago, I would get headaches and nosebleeds when I did a trail scenting. Ever since Forest Hills, the ability had expanded, and the dark mass left me alone. Which was great, but it left me anxious, like waiting for a hammer to fall on my brain.

Powell’s essence permeated the tunnel. By the strength of the trail, she didn’t have much of a head start. After we left, she must have waited in the cell only long enough to make sure we weren’t coming back in immediately. “Where’s this lead?” I asked.

Meryl didn’t pause when she answered. “A nexus. From there she can go into the subway, the sewer, or a couple of other places.”

Within minutes, we reached the nexus. Our corridor fanned open, and the path split left and right. Directly ahead, stairs led up and another flight went down. Powell’s essence went to both side directions and down the stairs. Meryl cursed under her breath.

“How the hell did she do that?” I asked.

She tilted her head, trying to gauge the right direction. “This nexus loops back on itself several times. She ran in a few circles to confuse us.”

“Her essence trail has been getting thicker. We’re getting closer,” I said.

Meryl nodded. “I hate to say this, but we either split up or flip a coin.”

“We have more than two choices,” said Dylan.

Meryl couldn’t help twisting the corner of her mouth. “Yeah, well, I didn’t bring my poly-dice. I’ll go left; Dylan goes right. You stay here, Grey, and watch the stairs. I don’t want her coming up behind us.”

“I’m not going to stand here and wait. I’ll check down the stairs,” I said.

In the blue glow of her light, Meryl looked spectral. “And if she’s down there, what are you going to do, annoy her to a standstill?”

“Ouch,” I said.

Meryl muttered, and a point of yellow light danced in the air above her other hand. She flicked her fingers, and the light sailed down the stairs. “That’ll pop if she passes it. If it pops, I suggest you run like hell and call us, in that order. Winny is no slouch in the essence department.”

“Fine,” I said, annoyed and embarrassed. Dylan sparked his own light, and the two of them moved in opposite directions. My regular vision faded as their lights receded. My ability showed three ghostly essence signatures. Nothing lived in these tunnels to give off a sign of life. The darkness was so complete, I felt an overwhelming sensation of dizziness. I closed my eyes to stave off vertigo.

The sound of their footsteps died away. Time dragged as I listened for the faintest popping sound from the stairs. I focused on the essence around me, alert for the slightest change.

A gleeful sending from Meryl burst in my head. Got her!

I moved in an instant, chasing after Meryl’s essence down the left-hand corridor. In the dark, I misjudged the floor and hit the wall when the path curved away, rounding upward.

Watch it. She set binding traps, Meryl sent. The essence signatures appeared to end ahead. I slowed my pace and ran into a wall again. The corridor bent sharply to the left. I swore loudly and kept going.

I can see her.

“We’re here,” I shouted. My voice rang hollow in the dark. The floor dipped abruptly, and I grabbed the granite wall to keep my balance. A burst of light ahead blinded me. I squeezed my eyes shut, using only my sensing ability to see where I was going. Another flash made my eyelids glow red, and essence-fire crackled loudly in the stone passage.

My body shields triggered against a binding spell that slithered from the ceiling. A streamer of hot light grabbed me. The shields stopped the binding from burrowing into my neck. Bindings come in two flavors: whole field, which feel like a numbing blanket thrown over your head, or ribbons, which feel like burning rope. Powell favored the latter. The binding looped on my neck pulled me against the wall. More ribbons snaked out of the wall, wrapping my arms and legs. I fought the urge to struggle. Resistance signals the ribbons to send fiery pain through the nerve endings.

I need… Meryl’s sending broke off so quickly it stung.

“Meryl!” I yelled. The binding against my neck burned. I ignored it and yelled again. “Meryl!”

No answer. “Dylan!” I didn’t think I was that far ahead of him.

I was close enough to hear fighting. Sendings don’t take long to make or send, unless you’re me. The dark mass in my head clawed at my brain whenever I tried. I didn’t care. Taking a deep breath, I wrapped my memory of Meryl’s essence with the desire to talk to her. I pushed the thought out, one word calling Meryl’s name. I gasped at the finger of pain that hit the bridge of my nose. The sending drifted away, a lazy tendril with none of the speed and power it should have had. This close, it should have reached her instantly. She didn’t respond. I didn’t know if it meant she didn’t receive it or couldn’t.

“Dammit, Meryl! Answer me!” Nothing.

A cool breeze fluttered across my face, cloying and unnatural. Dull green phosphorescence oozed out of the wall opposite me. It dripped down and pooled on the floor. Another glob appeared next to it, and another farther down. A moan quivered on the breeze, low and steady, then a sibilant whisper began to build. Another spot blossomed, then two more. More bubbled up from the floor and one on the ceiling. The whispering grew louder, breaking into voices tripping over one another.

The phosphorescence bulged from the walls. The ceiling spot sagged, grew thick and bulbous, and dropped to the floor in a gelatinous ball. The whispering became ragged and gasping as the sour green essence took on more substance. Blunt appendages sprouted from them, stretching out to test the air like the night of my alley run.

The essence emitted a strange vibration. The various masses gathered, spun, and swirled, shaping themselves into bodies. A face appeared in one, long and haughty, pressing toward me. It shook and sharp wings swept up out of the gelatinous mass. More coalesced, bodies shaping into human form, druid and human and fairy.

This was no time to be helplessly bound to a wall. “Dylan! I could use your help here!”

More than a dozen figures ranged around me, laughing at the feeble sound of my voice. I had met some of them before-the Inverni from the night of my alley run, the druid from the subway tracks, and the vanished man on the bridge on the night of my meeting with Ceridwen.

“Are you remembering?” a Danann fairy said, his voice echoing among the others. A woman stepped closer, blond, angry, white sparks in her eyes. Her hand burned on my cheek. “Do you remember the pain you’ve given?”

A druid pressed an index finger into my side, sending a shock through me. “Do you fear it?”

They moved in, their faces livid, eyes malevolent. Their essences electrified my skin. My heart raced, the binding spell tightening as I tried to pull away. Hands thrust forward, plunging into my body, and I screamed.

“Do you repent?” said the Inverni. He pushed his hand into my face. It seared pain into my skin. I knew him then, his essence familiar as it violated mine. He was from the ferry. They all were. I knew them all, remembered them, their body signatures stamped on my memory. The attack on the Pride Wind, the group that almost killed me and Dylan. My dead had come calling.

“I regret nothing,” I shouted through the pain. “Nothing!”

“Then suffer our pain through the night,” a druid said.

The Inverni pressed harder. I screamed as his hand sank into my head. They closed around him, all of them, hands clawing at my flesh, burrowing into muscle and bone and sending my body into convulsions. The dark mass in my mind spiked and somehow I screamed louder than I already was doing. Their expressions changed, became perplexed, then fearful.

The Inverni screamed, too. The others tried to pull away, but something dark trailed out of my skin, like a thick, curling mist. They screamed, all of them at once, a howling of rage and horror. The binding spell seared my flesh, but darkness wrapped the ribbons, and they sloughed off like char. Darkness filled my vision, blotting out everything.

I slumped to my knees, hearing screams, feeling essence pour into me as the mist snared the remaining figures. They died again. But this time, they didn’t just die. This time their essences disintegrated, the dark mist tearing them to shreds, rending them to shards of light that had no integrity, no hope of incorporating into whoever they were. The mist absorbed it, sucking in the light, pulling the essence into my body.

I fell forward, gagging, chaotic images flooding my brain, places and faces I knew I’d never seen. I blacked out. At least I think I did. My body hung suspended in a nothingness, not the dark mist, but a blackness, silent and deep. Dying screams echoed in the nothingness, ringing hollowly in my ears.

Someone called my name from far off. The screams faded away. I drifted in the blackness, numb with the silence. I heard my name again, louder. White light filled my mind, flooding me in a wash of soothing essence. I opened my eyes. Dylan knelt over me, his face frightened even as he radiated healing essence over me. “Connor? Can you hear me?”

The mist dissipated. I found my voice. “I’m okay.”

He gave a ragged sigh as he pulled me to his chest. “Danu, you don’t look okay. What the hell happened? Where’s Meryl?”

His warmth enveloped me, his essence wrapping me in a cocoon of relief. The fog lifted from my mind. I sat forward, breaking his embrace. “We have to find her.”

Blood rushed to my head as Dylan helped me up. I leaned against the wall to steady myself, feeling the stone flow onto my fingers. My skin felt alive, every nerve ending firing. I breathed deeply.

“You were screaming,” he said.

Dylan’s essence illuminated the corridor. No evidence of my attackers remained. “I killed them again, Dylan. The ones from that day. They came for me, and I killed them again.”

He brought his hand to my chin, tilting my face from side to side. “You had smoke coming out of your eyes. Dark smoke like nothing I’ve ever seen. It had no essence, like it wasn’t even there.”

My face felt the memory of it, something I recognized but didn’t understand. “The thing in my head came out. It’s still in me, though. I can feel it more than ever. It feels bigger. I think it’s growing.”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me back the way we had come. “We have to get you to Gillen Yor.”

I pulled away. “No! Powell’s going to kill her, Dylan. I can’t let that happen.”

He looked about to argue, then nodded with a sad smile. “I know. Whatever’s happening to you, Con, you’re still who you are. Let’s go.”

We passed a section of hallway with high concentrations of essence. Burn marks scorched the walls. An intricate web of binding spells hung in tatters, already fading. “They fought here.”

Anxiety settled over me as I sensed the essence trail. They moved together, but Meryl’s signature was faint while Powell’s blazed.

“This was part of her plan somehow,” Dylan said behind me. “There are too many binding spells. She must have set them a while ago.”

The hallway ended at a spiral staircase of stone. “Powell waited ten years for this. She’s a contingency planner. She saved Meryl for last so Viten could kill his killer,” I said over my shoulder.

I took out my cell phone. No signal. We were too deep underground. The stair wound about its central axis, turning over and over, progress that felt like a standstill. A signal bar flickered into view on my screen. I called Murdock, but the connection broke. The steps vibrated under our feet with the dull rumble of a subway train. We reached the top, an incongruous metal door with a modern spring bar. It popped open into the decrepit remains of an ancient bathroom.

A glamour spell snapped in place behind us as we left the room, hiding the door behind a wall of dirty tiles. I recognized the narrow platform of Arlington Street Station, two blocks away from the Guildhouse. My cell signal stabilized, and I called Murdock again.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m on the Common. The place is a zoo,” he said.

“Powell’s escaped. She’s got Meryl, and I think they’re headed for the fairy ring. Can you get up there?”

“I’m not far. We have a command post at the monument.”

“Meet you there.” I disconnected.

A train arrived as we reached the stairs. A throng of fey disembarked, pushing to the exits with the excitement of children. Dylan and I shoved our way up the steps, fighting elbows and wings and nasty glares. We exited to the corner of Arlington and Boylston.

Police guarded the entrance gates of the Public Garden, blocking everyone from entering. The streets were mobbed. We joined the crowd heading for the Common, hundreds of people of every conceivable species of fey imaginable.

At the end of the block, the Common glowed with more radiant essence. The light burned brightest through the bare limbs of the trees where the land sloped up to the towering Civil War monument and the fairy hill beyond it. Fairies of all kinds filled the sky, their wings flaming with essence as they swooped and swirled in dance. As we ran down the lane that passed the bandstand, the crowd swelled, slowing down as more people flooded into the park. Everyone wanted to be on the hill.

I stopped, amazed. An inverted funnel of misty gray light twisted into the sky, long wisps of the Taint revolving around it.

Dylan spoke in my ear with awe and wonder in his voice. “It’s really opening, Connor. The veil is opening.”

I pushed ahead. “That thing better be exit only.”