Mark Del Franco - Uncertain Allies

Shay jumped as Uno let out a piercing yowl.

“Meryl?” I called. I hurried past the bed alcove, my head pounding with heat. Meryl stood at the easel, white splatters down the front of her sweatshirt as she smeared gobs of paint onto the canvas. Next to the couch, the needlepoint rug hung askew, revealing where Shay had hidden the stone ward under an old table. Fierce white essence light jumped from the bowl, arcing into Meryl from across the room. Her eyes and hands glowed as she slapped at the canvas with her hands, the white painting burning with a rainbow of essence. Uno’s yowling scaled higher and more frantic.

I staggered under waves of pain. The vision in my right eye vanished, replaced by a darkness littered with jarring flashes. A black bolt leaped out of my chest and tangled with the white essence in the air. As if from far off in the distance, I heard Shay scream.

Essence seared into me, delicious surging essence. It splintered inside me, racing tendrils burning with energy. I had been fighting against the urge to absorb essence for weeks, keeping the darkness at bay, but the volume from the bowl was overwhelming. I couldn’t restrain the darkness. I dropped to my knees and shouted at the cold luscious pain. “Get it out of here!” I shouted.

Shay’s body signature radiated in a soft purple light. The stone bowl glowed like a brilliant white star as he lifted it. My body yearned for it, wanted to reach out and suck it in. Nothing but white light cascaded across my mind. The star rose in the darkness, obliterating any sign of Shay, then danced away from sight.

My vision muddied, the room becoming a blur of fading color shot through with streaks of light. Intense heat and cold warred in my chest as the dark mass pulsed against the essence that remained. Meryl swayed on her feet, her body shimmering with golden light. Behind her, shapes coalesced into almost recognizable figures, then broke apart in a maelstrom of color. The surface of the canvas spun like the eye of a hurricane, impossibly white, with a dark hole in the center.

The bands of shadow from my chest revolved around Meryl like predators, worrying at the edges of her body essence. Desire rose within me, a desire to goad the darkness forward, make it take what it sought. I struggled against it, fighting against the yearning. With a flash, essence rippled beneath my skin. Something snapped inside me as the light and the darkness met in a blaze of pain. I flew backwards with a force like a gunshot recoil. Meryl crumpled to the floor, the canvas awash with essence.

Spots danced in front of my eyes, blotchy smears of red and black that weren’t essence. I convulsed as my sensing ability broke off like a sudden dousing of the sun, and sweet, sweet numbness swept over me.

A steady throb pounded my temples. I forced my eyes open. From the ceiling, a wavy distorted image of my body lying on something white reflected from thick glass. Behind the glass, a dull gray smear indicated steel sheathing. Around me, the walls, floor, and lone door were lined the same way. Essence didn’t travel well through glass, and metal warped it back on itself. Putting the two together created an effective barrier against it.

I lifted my head from a pillow, my brain following the motion a second later. I sat up, holding my forehead to ease the rush of blood to my head. To either side, four-foot stone obelisks shimmered with a pearlescent glow. They reacted to my movement, flashing with a slow whirl that danced through the field around the stone. They were dampening wards to monitor my body signature and prevent the accidental or intentional use of essence.

I was on a bed in a containment room. Hospitals used them to protect patients from outside influences that might disrupt healing spells. Mental wards used them to keep patients calm and protect staff against unpredictable essence bursts. Prisons used them as holding cells. Mine was a holding cell.

The thick glass-coated door opened, and four Danann security agents entered. They fanned out, their wings rising and falling with sharp flashes of blue and white, their hands primed with essence and ready to fire. Briallen came in next, her face set with concern as she approached the bed. Outside the door, Joe fluttered in the hallway. He waved.

“Where am I?” I asked.

Briallen stopped at the foot of the bed. “Avalon Memorial holding area. Do you know who you are?”

I smiled through fatigue. “You know I’ve been working on that, Briallen.”

Tension eased out of her. Briallen had spent a good part of the last few years scolding me for whining I wasn’t the person I wanted to be anymore. She took my hand. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“What the hell happened?”

She placed her free hand on my forehead. She didn’t perform her usual probe but examined my body signature with the gentlest touch of essence. “I was hoping you could tell me. You had some kind of episode. Two agents who arrived on the scene were drained.” Her hand slid to my shoulder as panic ran through me. “I said ‘drained,’ not ‘dead.’ They’re fine. How do you feel?”

“Where’s Meryl?” I asked instead of answering her.

“Upstairs. She’s fine. Tell me what happened.”

I glanced at the guards. “Are they necessary?”

She examined the ward monitors. I wasn’t an expert on them, but I knew they measured things like essence outputs and fluctuation patterns. Are you in control of yourself? she sent.

My body was sore. My chest ached, and my face throbbed as if someone had punched me, but Briallen wasn’t asking about a physical assessment. The black mass in my head smoldered with a heated smoothness, not the jagged edges that appeared when it was agitated. The hungering sensation wasn’t there either. It was sated, for now. I nodded. With the flutter from a sending, Briallen dismissed the agents. Joe flew in over their heads as they filed out.

I swung my legs off the bed. “I want to see Meryl.”

Briallen steadied me as I stood. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

I pushed my way toward the door. “What about Shay?”

She grabbed my arm with a fierce grip that warned me I wasn’t going anywhere. “He called Leonard, then disappeared before help arrived. Do not make me ask what happened again, Connor.”

I forced myself to remain calm. “The dark thing came out of me. It reacted to something in Shay’s apartment. I don’t understand it myself.”

Worry etched her face. “Then why should I let you leave this room?”

Dumbfounded, I stared at her. “What do you mean? Am I under arrest?”

She relaxed her grip but held on. “You’ve committed no crime, Connor, but I saw the agents brought in. There are going to be questions. Convince me you’re not a danger outside this room.”

Her neutral tone unnerved me. Briallen always warned me that sometimes personal relationships had to take a backseat to bigger issues. She’d had pain in her past, details she hadn’t shared except to say she did what needed to be done when necessary. She hadn’t cut me any slack when I was a young kid in training. She wasn’t going to now.

I went with honesty. “I can’t. I can say that at this moment, you have nothing to worry about.”

Not taking her eyes from me, she cocked her head. “Joe?”

He squinted as he fluttered around me, his essence glowing hot pink. Flits sensed essence at a granular level. They needed to in order to be able to teleport without landing in a wall and killing themselves. Joe was doing his own version of a scan. “He’s telling the truth, m’lady. I don’t see anything freaky.”

I dropped my gaze to the floor. “You don’t trust me.”

Briallen rubbed my arm. “I don’t trust myself.”