Mark Del Franco - Unperfect Souls

I stepped aside, then followed as Murdock ducked under the pipe and squeezed through the gap. The passageway was molded from the surrounding earth with supports made from random material—car bumpers, scaffolding, old timber, granite blocks—holding the opening stable. My body signature tingled against my skin. A few months earlier, troll essence had bonded to me, and it had never gone completely away. I’ve had a sensitivity to troll work ever since. “The earth and stone were shaped by a troll using essence, Murdock.”

Murdock’s flashlight beam was lost in the distance. “We didn’t fare so well last time we encountered a troll. Maybe we should call the Guild.”

I rubbed my hand along the wall, dirt and stone particles clinging to my body essence as the troll residue attracted it. “It’s old work. I think the troll who made it is long gone. The only fresh body signatures I’m getting are dwarves and solitaries.”

He leaned his chin into his shoulder and called it in on the radio. “Let’s check it out,” he said.

“Now?”

His face was shadowed when he looked over his shoulder. “I’ve got a gun and a body shield.”

Murdock’s body shield existed in my mind as a curiosity and a failure. On an earlier case we worked together, he had become caught in the backlash from a major spell. When he recovered, he could create a body shield stronger than most fey body shields. No other abilities had manifested, though, and he remained human to my senses. The shield’s existence fascinated me because I had never seen something like that happen to a human. It also made me feel that my own lack of ability had prevented me from protecting him, and I wondered what the change in him boded for the future. “This is the part of the movie where I think, ‘Why the hell are they going in there?’ ” I said.

He walked up the tunnel. “And this is the part where I say, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ ”

Joe flew between us. “And this is the part where I wonder if there will be cookies and whiskey when we’re done.”

Where the sewer had the chill of winter, the air in the tunnel had the tang of steam heat, the faint odor of wet metal and rust. The temperature shifted, warmer and damp, but not hot. A hundred feet in, the troll-worked walls gave way to a wide concrete space with bricked-over archways along one side. The stench of death grew, as did what appeared at first to be homeless squats—piles of clothes, shoes, glasses, pocketbooks. Someone had gathered the items like to like. We passed a mound of cell phones, then a stack of briefcases, and piles and piles of magazines.

At the end of the concrete passage, we found the first skull. Joe spotted it, his keen eyesight picking out the yellowed bone amid a stack of hats. “Murdock, there’s an awful lot of stuff down here. We should call for backup,” I said.

Murdock squatted in front of the skull as if he were going to question it. He shined his light in the direction we had been walking. “I think I see stairs. This looks like a sealed-off basement.”

“We’re in the Weird, Murdock. Basements are either abandoned or you wish they were.”

We went to the foot of the stairs. Rusted metal steps led up to more darkness, concrete-skimmed walls crackling off to show the brick beneath, paper trash covered in sooty dust lining the sides of the treads. “Up or back?” I asked.

Murdock stared into the darkness of the stairs. “Back. We need to have this whole place secured.”

“I found a body!” Joe shouted.

We swung our lights toward him. Halfway back in the basement, Joe’s essence illuminated a pile of clothes against the brick wall. As we retraced our steps, my sensing ability picked out a null spot below him, an essenceless void. Our lights exposed a small woman propped against the wall, ashen-faced, her dark hair long and greasy. Her skin pulled tightly over her bone structure, as though she had no fat, her prominent face bones in stark relief to the wells of her closed eyes and open mouth. She didn’t look like she had been dead long.

“There’s a head in her lap. I think it’s the one you’re looking for,” Joe said.

As he lowered for a closer look, something stirred around the null zone of the body, a purple-black essence forming in my sensing ability where none had been a moment before. The strange haze coalesced into thick ropes undulating in the air a foot or so above the body. “Careful, Joe. Something’s there,” I called out.

As he reached for the sword that he kept hidden against his side, an essence strand shot at him, and the woman’s eyes flew open, revealing deep black pits with no whites. She hissed with a thick rasp.

Joe yelped and popped out of sight. Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! he sent from wherever he had vanished to. He materialized behind us. “It’s a leanansidhe . Kill it!”

Murdock’s body shield flared in dense crimson around us as he pulled his gun. The woman flattened herself against the wall, pressing her head sideways and staring at us with her eerie dark eyes. “What the hell is that?” Murdock said.

“Holy shit, get out of here, Joe,” I said. He popped out.

Thick purple strands of essence burst out of the leanansidhe and burrowed into Murdock’s body shield. He grunted and staggered into me. I grabbed him by the waist and pulled. The strands tightened and pulsed, fighting against me.

“Shoot it!” I shouted.

Murdock moved in a daze, his arms flailing. He dropped his flashlight. The gun went off, the shot ricocheting into the darkness. A strand of purple essence dove at me, spearing my chest with cold, sharp pain. The dark mass in my head flared, and I screamed.

The dark mass moved inside my head, plunging downward with a hot, burning surge. A spike of black light ripped from my chest and coiled around the purple essence, leaping along the strand and wrapping around the leanansidhe . Murdock fell from my arms as the darkness yanked me forward. The dark spike lifted the leanansidhe and slammed her against the floor. She screamed and released her essence, the purple strands retracting wildly into her body until she became a strange null void again. The thing in my head sucked the black spike back inside me.

Gagging, I fell to my knees. Both flashlights lay on the floor, illuminating dust in the air. A growled panting came from the darkness. I shuffled on my knees and retrieved a flashlight, playing the beam along the wall until I spotted the leanansidhe . She winced when the light struck her, but held her ground in a crouch. “My apologies, my brother. Forsooth, I did not know the prey was yours,” she said.

“He’s not my prey,” I said.

She chuckled, revealing slick, blue-tinged teeth. “Yes, yes, my brother, I’ve played that game. Spool it in with hope and comfort. ’Tis sweeter in the final strike, no? Pray, bring me a sip of this one before it fades. I’ve never tasted the like before and would savor it again.”

I slipped a dagger from my boot. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stand up slowly and keep your hands where I can see them.”

She jutted her chin out and stretched her head toward me, her nostrils quivering as if she were scenting me. “Ah, you are young, my brother. Denying what you are will change nothing. You will reach from without or die.”

“I said stand up.”

“Peace between us, my brother. I leave you to your prey.” She scuttled backwards and vanished into the wall.

“Stop!” I ran forward. At the bottom of a blocked archway, missing bricks formed a hole. She had escaped to the other side of the wall. I crouched and saw nothing but more darkness. The opening was too small for me to follow.

Joe flashed into sight high above, then flickered out in less than a breath. A moment later, he reappeared, sword out and ready. “Is she gone?”