Mark Del Franco - Unperfect Souls

He faded. Insulting mysterious beings from the Land of the Dead was a defense I never knew worked. It didn’t work with Jark, but I guessed it did with dogs.

I cut through an alley. Petty street crime goes down in the winter, and the Weird was no different on that score. The damned cold bothered murderers and thieves like anyone else, so I wasn’t too worried. Besides, I wasn’t joking with the dog. I wasn’t stupid. I had my sensing ability ticking away. No one was out, especially not by a section of abandoned warehouses where they weren’t likely to find anyone to mug.

I slowed to a stop. In the gray and white of the street, a bright orange sticker stood out like a flare. The crime-scene warning on the warehouse door. The one I slit open. I looked up and down the street for anyone. Empty. Uno flashed into view at my side but disappeared before I fully looked at him.

Did he herd me there? Could he hear my thoughts? Did he know I was thinking about the leanansidhe or sense that I was about to? The possible connection between my dark mass and Eagan’s haze had simmered in the back of my mind all night. Could Uno know that? Or did I lead myself to the door, my subconscious pushing me there because of what I was thinking, the sensual pleasure I got from using the dark mass’s abilities bubbling up in some mental center of desire.

I didn’t care. I was there, and the creature in the tunnel held a key to possibly saving the Guildmaster’s life. I hadn’t heard from Keeva. I didn’t think I would now, not after what Moira said. There was no way Ryan macGoren wasn’t involved in her game, and Keeva wasn’t likely to do me any favors over her boyfriend’s objections. The leanansidhe was going to be down there. I pushed aside the thought that I was rationalizing going inside. No law said I couldn’t learn something that might help Eagan and get off on the feeling at the same time.

The door popped open easily. Between the cold and the walk, the edge of my drunk was blunted by the time I reached the walled-off basement. Uno took care of the rest. He appeared near the back wall, suddenly there in the dark, and let out a howl that shook the walls. Adrenaline surged through me at the sound, burning off the rest of the alcohol in my system. When I reached the hidden opening in the wall, the dog was gone.

I hesitated. Maybe the dog was trying to warn me off. Maybe I wasn’t as secure against the leanansidhe because of the thing in my head as I thought I was. I pushed the thought aside. The dog was messed up, a lost Dead animal with no more purpose, twisted like any other Dead fey. How could it portend my journey to TirNaNog if there was no TirNaNog anymore? It should have shown up at Eagan’s when I apparently died and was reborn, but it didn’t. I walked into the tunnel.

The dark mass pulsed in my head, a throb of pressure against the back of my eyes. I flushed with warmth despite the cold in the tunnel. The air rubbed against my skin, an itchy pleasure of temperature difference. My peripheral vision narrowed as the dark mass moved, and I navigated the tunnel by instinct and memory.

The leanansidhe ’s room was a shambles. Books scattered across the floor where they had fallen from overturned tables. Burn marks seared the fabric of the armchair Druse used, and her reading lamp lay shattered next to it. I sensed nothing, no essence, the dull, sterile aftermath of the leanansidhe ’s ability. At the back of the room, a white-and-silver essence glow drew me to the fissure in the wall.

Druse hunched over the bloodstone bowl in the chamber. No barrier field prevented me from approaching; the ward stones that generated it lay broken on the floor. The dark mass shifted, a burning sensation down my neck moving with the slow ooze of hot metal. My tongue grew thick with anticipation, a physical reaction to my desire for essence. Or the dark mass’s desire. The difference between what I wanted and what the dark mass wanted blurred in the light of the bloodstone bowl.

Druse lifted her head, her eyes half-closed in a stupor. Her essence field shimmered in shades of purple, thick, pulpy tendrils of light hanging from her face, their tips silver with fading essence as she absorbed it. Her lips lifted in a lazy smile. “Ah, my brother, come, taste, and sup with me. I feel the need within you.”

Speech refused to come. Something pierced my right hand with exquisite pain. Something pierced my chest with exquisite pain. Something pierced my cheek with exquisite pain. Dark essence snaked out of me, hungry darkness that danced in ropes of darkness. I stumbled against the bedrock pedestal beside Druse and drank, strands of darkness dipping into the ward stone, eclipsing the essence. Blood pounded in my temples, a steady, sensual rhythm that reverberated throughout my body, my chest filling as I inhaled through blood-gorged lips.

Druse touched me—with her hand, with her essence—a languid caress on my forehead. “Yes, my brother, surrender to the need, let the desire guide you. It’s not pain, is it? It’s the pleasure in the pain, yes?”

Her face pressed near mine, her eyes luminous with excitement, and I smiled. I understood her, the pulsing dark things slicing out of me, pulsing with rich essence, a pleasure that demanded payment. My skin shivered, every pore alive with feeling, with need and desire. My face grew hot, blood rushing through me in waves, prickling my skin to life, arousing me like nothing I had ever known.

Druse whispered in my ear—words, sounds—I was no longer sure. Her essence pressed against me, bulbous tendrils worrying at my face, my eyes. They pressed inward, and I gasped as they cut through, cut through and merged with my own, coiled around my darkness and my need and . . .

. . . yes yes I feel us we are us and the essence is ours and the want and the need and the same so good so strong so much so more we need more yes more the bowl empties and still we want and still we need and and and still there is more always more we need the prize the treasure the hidden gem we do not need to save it now to cherish it we need it now we want it now we reach for it now . . . oh myself my brother . . . oh there yes there yes it is there oh yes oh yes oh yes here it is so rich so lush we must have it must have it all drink of it take it all in the more the more we will have more and find more and more and . . .

Something broke in my mind, and I screamed at the pain. Druse vanished out of my mind like an extinguished candle. I opened my eyes. Dark ropelike lines trailed out of me across the floor, trailing off into the darkness of an exit from the chamber.

“Connor!” someone shouted.

Essence shivered and oozed through the shadow lines, the living essence of someone fey. As it seeped through me, my sensing ability touched it, and I recognized fairy essence.

Someone shook my arm. “Connor!”

I touched the fairy essence through the darkness, Danann fairy essence. Something hit me in the face, jarring the darkness out of the vision in one eye. A haze lifted off my awareness. I shook my head. The dark mass burned with a flow of essence, Danann essence from the next room. I shook my head again. Horrified by what I was doing, I recognized the essence that I was absorbing.

The dark ropes undulated as the silver mesh in my left arm flared and lit with essence. Like the dark mass, the actions and reactions of the tattoo seemed to have their own agenda, one I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. I shuddered as blades of ice sliced through me, tangling with the streams of darkness from my head. The dark mass convulsed and retreated. The white light from my arm flickered and went out. The backlash of the force and the pain threw me off my feet.