Mark Del Franco - Uncertain Allies

At the back of the room, I slipped through a long fissure in the wall of the room. Murdock followed, his gun at the ready. Inside was a natural two-story chamber, a gap in the bedrock under the landfill far above. In the middle of the chamber, an upheaving of stone rose like a pedestal. Druse had stored the ward-stone bowl on it. Months later, the bedrock glowed with residual essence from the powerful ward. “Shay killed the leanansidhe , or at least I thought he did.”

Murdock relaxed his stance but didn’t holster his weapon. He wasn’t taking any chances this time. “Shay? Runaway prostitute Shay?” he asked.

“It’s a long story.”

“I think you better start telling it, Connor, while I decide if I’m a little pissed off,” he said.

I inhaled and closed my eyes. Time after time, I held back information from Murdock, thinking it safer for him or to avoid an argument. Time after time, Murdock found out and read me out about it. This time, I didn’t tell him because it was personal. “I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed, Leo. I lost a piece of myself down here. I gave in to something dark inside me that had nothing to do with the dark mass. I want to blame it on the dark mass in my head, but I think that might be an excuse. I had this craving for power I never realized I had. I let it overwhelm me, and I almost killed Keeva because of it. If Shay hadn’t shown up, I don’t know what would have happened.”

“How the hell did Shay get involved?”

I chuckled in derision at myself, caught with another thing I had kept to myself. “Yeah, that’s something else I didn’t tell you about. I have a dog.”

Murdock brought the flashlight beam back to my face. “Are you losing it, Connor? ’Cause I don’t understand a damned thing you’re saying.”

“I don’t blame you. I don’t understand it myself. There’s a dog. Shay and I call him Uno. He’s a fey dog. You’ve actually been around him, but for some reason you can’t see him.”

“Okay, you’re not convincing me you’re not losing it,” he said.

I circled around the bedrock. “You’ve seen fey people vanish in front of you. It’s not exactly the same, but something about Uno cloaks him from certain people. I don’t fully understand it myself. Joe can see him. That might be because he’s supersensitive to essence. Keeva didn’t see him when he was standing right next to her. Shay can see him because he’s supposed to. The old tales of Faerie say it’s a harbinger of death.”

Murdock made a slow circuit of the room perimeter. “I’ll accept that. God knows I’ve seen stranger things around you. But if you thought Shay killed the leanansidhe , why are we down here?”

I stared around the chamber. “I was hoping to find the body. It happened the night before the riots. After everything that happened, I forgot about it. Can you believe that? I forgot about a dead body.”

“A lot happened that night.” He looked away. It happened the same night his father died.

“When I saw that darkness stuff in the Tangle, I realized I had screwed up again. I was in denial, Leo. If I told someone what had happened down here, I’d have to admit what I had done. I think I convinced myself I was protecting Shay and keeping him out of jail, but I was really trying to deny what I did.”

I walked toward the bedrock. “The leanansidhe had a ward stone that amplified essence. She showed me how to drink from it, and it made the dark mass in my head stop hurting.”

Murdock shifted in place opposite me. “The dwarf said she wanted the stone. That’s why you wanted to come down here.”

I ran my hand along part of the bedrock, and the essence in the stone danced up my arm. “Shay has it. We’ve told no one else.”

As I touched the bedrock, the dark mass shifted in my head, perhaps at the memory of that night, but it didn’t push to come out. “Like you said, Leo, the first time we found the leanansidhe , I thought she was dead. Her body should be here. The blow to the head must not have killed her. The deaths of those dwarves are my fault. I have to stop her before she kills more people or goes after Shay.”

“Now we know who we’re looking for,” he said.

“Better yet. We know what she’s looking for,” I said.

I went to Druse’s hiding place first because I had to know if her body was there. I had to confirm the facts with my own eyes. Part of it was my nature, which had made me a good investigator once upon a time. The important part, though, was not wanting to scare Shay until I knew for sure what was going on. He didn’t need any reminders of that night.

Sometimes I wondered where Shay would be if he had never met me. Almost a year earlier, he had been a minor witness in a murder case Murdock and I worked on. Shay’s involvement grew when I made a bad call and asked his boyfriend Robyn to act as a decoy for the murderer. Robyn fit the needed physical description of the victims better than anyone available, and I thought he would be a slam-dunk for finding the killer. I was too right, and he didn’t survive the setup. Shay lost his lover and protector because of me. Ever since, I’ve looked out for him whenever I can.

In life, Shay’s boyfriend Robyn was human, a young guy with a tough life that involved drugs and prostitution. We didn’t like each other. Robyn was convinced I didn’t care, that the only reason I wanted their help was for my own benefit. It didn’t help that Murdock gave him an ultimatum—work with us or go to jail. He was killed, maybe by his own arrogance and stupidity, but I set him on the path that led to his death.

Then Robyn showed up again. When he died, he ended up Dead in the Celtic realm of TirNaNog. The veil lifted between our world and his, and he came back to check on Shay. When I collapsed the veil, the Dead that were here became trapped, Robyn among them. Another bad call on my part that I didn’t know how to fix.

When I was under the influence of the leanansidhe , Shay came to my rescue for a change. The reward for his help was yet another complication. Since he was the only person I knew that could move the leanansidhe ’s stone, I thought hiding the stone with him would be safe. He wasn’t fey, so he couldn’t use it. My old partner, Keeva, knew about the stone, but not where it was, and she was off in Tara. Until I told Murdock, Shay and I had agreed to tell no one else he had it.

Now Shay was in danger again, because of me, again. Druse might suspect dwarves had taken the stone and gone after them, but it was only a matter of time before she would find her way to Shay’s doorstep. At some point as she prowled the city, she would sense the stone’s telltale emanations. I had to move it somewhere that wouldn’t put Shay in danger.

Visiting Shay presented a tricky situation. I was being watched by Guild and Consortium agents and who knew who else. Eorla probably had a pair of eyes on me, too. Any unusual place I visited might spark unwanted interest, and I didn’t want to draw attention to Shay.

Walking Meryl around town for an hour or so had become a habit, the kind of habitual activity that caused a spy to lose interest and get sloppy. Even better—I took her different places, hoping against hope that a different environment might jog her out of her constant reverie. Wandering into Shay’s neighborhood and stopping by for a few minutes was a low-risk proposition that I hoped wouldn’t raise eyebrows.

I maneuvered Meryl along the sidewalk with some difficulty. In her trance state, she walked with a simple push and maintained a steady pace until stopped. The problem was that she didn’t have any awareness of the surface she walked on. She stumbled with any change in the grade of the ground, lurching forward when the slope dropped and staggering when it rose. Her gait would adjust, then she staggered when the slope changed again. I had some success by holding her arm, pulling up when the sidewalk canted up and steadying her as it fell. Through it all, she maintained the same vacant stare.