Mark Del Franco - Unperfect Souls

When the governor called in the National Guard, the situation had gone national. CNN fed live images of tanks and trucks stationed at the Fort Point Channel bridges at Summer, Congress, and Old Northern. The mayor and governor assured everyone they were precautions and would enter the neighborhood only if the situation deteriorated.

I reached for more popcorn and paused. Meryl was wearing an old sloppy sweater of mine with an open neck. A purple spot in her cleavage showed above the collar. I pulled her sweater down a few inches. Near the bottom of her right breast, a red circle of teeth marks showed against purple-and-blue bruising. “Did I do that?”

Meryl tucked her chin and looked down. “Well, I’m not that limber.”

I slumped against the wall. “Hell, Meryl, I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’ve had worse. It’s a little out of character for you, though.”

I was horny as hell when I got back to my apartment and found her sleeping in it. When she woke up, we went at it like rabid cats on a hot summer night. At least, I did. The need was . . . I didn’t want to finish the thought. Something in my brain had clicked off. It hadn’t mattered who was in my bed. A need consumed me, and I wanted release.

Meryl adjusted her sweater and ate some popcorn. My stomach clenched. “Did I go over the line?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You would have known that last night, if you had. I’m making an observation, not an accusation. Trust me, if I hadn’t been having fun, you’d be in the hospital.”

I closed my eyes and dropped my head on her shoulder. “Something dark’s inside me,” I said.

“Something dark’s inside all of us, Grey. It’s only a problem if we let it too far out,” she said.

“What happens then?”

She pushed popcorn in my mouth. “No one shares popcorn with you, except maybe a big burly guy named Bubba. If you’re lucky, he’ll like butter.”

I twisted my neck to look up at her. “You have a knack for being flip and comforting at the same time, you know that?”

She grinned. “It’s not a knack; it’s a talent.”

I rolled up from the futon and opened the fridge. One benefit of having a small apartment is being able to reach for beer practically from bed. “We’re low on Guinness. Do you want to make a packie run?”

“Whoa! Check this out,” Meryl said.

The local news station had jumped to their helicopter camera. Black smoke billowed from a building on the far end of the Weird. The helicopter hovered, moving in a slow arc to keep upwind from the pall. Thick flames reflected from beneath, coloring the snow-covered streets a lurid orange.

I handed her a beer. “That’s Tide Street.”

She took a swig. “Yeah, tomorrow’s Herald is gonna read, ‘Hel Burns.’ ”

As I sat on the bed, a sending hit me so hard, it gave me a sharp pain. Get out of the apartment now. They’re coming for you.

“Did you get a sending just now?” I asked. Meryl shook her head. “Someone warned me to get out of the apartment.”

“Who?” Meryl asked.

Sendings usually have personality signatures on them, telltale touches of essence from the person who sent them. “I don’t know. It was stripped. Someone doesn’t want to be known.”

“Do you trust it?” she asked.

I drank some beer. “It was pretty strong. People don’t waste that much essence for a sending.” I paced along the foot of the futon. I glanced at the smoke on the TV screen. “I don’t like that it came as soon as that happened.”

Meryl slipped to the edge of the futon and leaned down for her boots. “So, let’s go watch the fire. Can’t hurt.”

I wandered into the study and pulled on a heavy black wool sweater and a knit cap. My boots were under the desk. When I leaned in to drag them out, I heard a deep rumble, and the lights went out. “Should I be freaked out by this?” I called out.

“Give me a sec,” Meryl called back. I carried the boots into the living room. Meryl was mostly dressed for outside, but she paused, hand palm up, with a ball of blue light filling the room. Her eyes shifted back and forth as the soft flutters of sendings tickled my senses. Her eyebrows shot up. “Wow. The power plant blew up.”

The old Boston Edison plant overlooked the Reserve Channel, not far beyond where the fire on Tide Street was. It serviced the general area, straddling the Weird and Southie. “Who’d you ask?”

She released the ball of light in order to pull her boots on. “No one. A bunch of people sent.”

I retrieved my daggers from the head of the futon and slipped them into my boots. With everything going on outside, being unarmed was not the way to go. Meryl pulled her cloak around her. “You know, sane people don’t go for walks after a curfew when the neighborhood is blowing up,” she said.

“Yeah, well, sane people don’t get warnings to get out of their apartments because someone’s coming for them either,” I said.

A ripple went through the air, and my ears popped at a sudden release of essence. Meryl pursed her lips. “Um . . . your security wards just died.”

I nodded, scanning the apartment with my sensing ability. “All of them. All at once. Let’s go.”

As I opened the apartment door, glass shattered behind us. Meryl whirled, a wall of essence flaring out of her. The yellow barrier slammed against a Danann fairy climbing in the window and knocked him outside. The sound of running echoed in the stairwell. I leaned over the stair railing, then ducked back into the apartment. “We’ve got armed brownies coming up.”

Meryl held her hands out to either side as she powered a barrier on the broken living-room window and pumped essence into the window wards in the study. “I’m getting Danann hits on the roof. What the hell is going on?”

Basement. Elevator shaft. Now.

“I just got hit with another sending,” I said. I rushed back out to the hall. Whoever did the sending was accurate. I didn’t have an elevator. I had a shaft. Far below, flashlight beams swept in wild patterns through the cage of the shaft as the brownies ran up. I pulled open the metal gate. The elevator car was in the basement. “Get out of there, Meryl!” I called.

She was at my side in an instant and surveyed the cables in the open shaft. “You’re kidding.”

I held out my hand. “Time’s wasting.”

“Hold on.” She ran back into the apartment and returned with a pair of canvas gloves. “I saw these on the counter. They’ll protect your hands some.”

“Thanks.” I pulled on the gloves.

Meryl hugged me from behind, one arm over my left shoulder, the other under my right arm. Her body shield flared around us. “Go!”

I jumped and grabbed the nearest cable. Momentum carried our weight across the shaft. “I’m sliding,” I said.

“I thought that was the plan,” Meryl said to the back of my head.

I relaxed my grip, and we started down. Meryl chanted behind me, and a thick mist billowed around us as she created a druid fog. The flashlight beams of the brownies drew closer. The brownies shouted as the fog obscured their vision. The gloves were coming off, and I grabbed the cable tighter. We jerked to a stop, my shoulders threatening to dislocate. We hung in the fog as a half dozen brownies on the stairs circled obliviously around us. I settled my hands deeper into the gloves when they passed and let go again. We spiraled around the cable the last three floors and hit the top of the elevator. Meryl’s body shield bounced us off the mechanics of the lift, and we rolled apart. The hatch on the elevator popped open. Meryl thrust essence-charged hands at the opening.

“Hurry up before they realize you’re gone,” a deep voice said.