“We boink?”
“Not for at least three months”—she narrowed her eyes at me—“that I know of.”
I chuckled. “No worry. It’s been that long.” I watched her read through something on her computer screen. “You said Nigel was looking for something you knew, too.”
“I did,” she said, and kept reading.
“So, macGoren and Nigel both think you know something important about me,” I said.
“They do,” she said.
“Aaaaand . . . we’re not really having a conversation, are we?” I asked.
She glanced at me. “They want their weapon back.”
Meryl had made a connection between me and Nigel I had never considered before I lost my abilities. When I didn’t understand Nigel’s coldness, she pointed out that I was his number one soldier in the fight against the Elven King. When I lost my abilities, he lost what he considered his advantage. “I’m not a weapon,” I said.
“But you were a tool and didn’t know it,” she said.
“Regardless, I’m neither now,” I said.
She pursed her lips. “Maybe not a weapon but maybe still a tool.”
I scrunched my face at her. “Are you continuing this metaphor or are you insulting me?”
She grinned. “I so love that you’re uncertain.”
I folded my arms against my chest. “Why does that amuse you so much?”
“Because you used to be this arrogant prick who thought he knew everything even when he didn’t, and now you act sorta human, and that baffled look you sometimes get on your face is incredibly adorable,” she said.
“And you like to kick puppies, too,” I said.
“Gee, Grey. I might be brutally honest, but I don’t think I’m cruel,” she said.
“So, be honest. What have you found?” I asked.
“A lot of chatter about the night of the riots and what you did at the Old Northern bridge. I have to confess to being intrigued by that, too.”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about. I spoke to Brokke last night. He thinks I have the ability to access a primordial darkness he calls the Gap,” I said.
“Nigel talked about that a lot. It’s part of the Teutonic creation myth,” she said.
“Do you think it’s a myth?”
She shrugged. “What’s a myth except a creative explanation for something people don’t understand? Something that is cloaked in myth doesn’t mean it isn’t about something real.”
“We don’t have a myth like that,” I said.
“Myths are created when something is important to a culture, Grey. The beginning and the end of the world isn’t something the Celts focus on. We care about the world as we find it, not as it was or will be. The Teuts took a different approach,” she said.
“So, Brokke could be wrong,” I said.
She shifted her eyes from side to side, pretending to check if anyone was listening. “If anyone ever heard me say this, Grey, I’d get kicked out of the Grove. Celts are interested in questions about the world. Teuts are interested in answers. Either one could be the right path, but that’s not important. Finding a path is. Only you can decide what to believe.”
I sighed. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
A small smile slipped onto Meryl’s lips. “You know what, sweetie? You just made another step on your own path.”
I set my chin. “Then my next step is to kill Bergin Vize.”
Meryl stared, a long, blank stare while she turned something over in her mind. Silence filled the room as we looked at each other, as if a turning point had been reached. Whether it was in our relationship or something greater, I couldn’t tell, but I felt it coming.
“Let it go, Connor,” she said.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Maybe that’s why you should,” she said.
“I can’t. I unleashed something in Vize that can’t be stopped by anyone else,” I said.
“What if you release something in yourself that can’t be stopped?” she asked.
“I’ve never wanted to end the world,” I said.
“Are you sure? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been trying to stop something. Every time you do, the world as it is ends and becomes something different, something new,” she said.
Her words twisted in my gut. What was change but the end of one thing for another? “That’s how the Wheel of the World works,” I said.
She looked down, and muttered, “Dammit.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She looked me in the eye then. “What do you want me to do?”
“First, we call Murdock. Then we hit Vize when he least expects it.”
29
Murdock pulled to the curb on Tide Street. He eased out of the car, his tactical uniform all black and business, and scanned the sidewalk like a cop. Meryl pushed herself off the wall she had been leaning against and hugged him. “You finally updated your wardrobe,” she said.
He hugged her back. “I see that a coma hasn’t made yours any more subtle.”
Meryl wore her biker jacket over a black lace top. What the neckline hid, the tight fabric more than made up for. Black leather pants and high, flat-soled boots with lots of buckles completed the outfit. She tilted her head and feigned confusion. “What do you mean? This is my running outfit.”
“Running to or from?” he asked.
“At,” she said.
He leaned against his car and crossed his arms. “What’s the plan?”
Meryl looked at me. “You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked.
“I’m sure,” I said.
She lifted her head, and the subtle flutter of a sending wafted through the air. In the distance, a howl mixed with the sound of sirens. Something primal tugged at me, raising the hair on the back of my neck. Another howl joined in, and another, until we were ringed with the sound of yips and barks drawing closer. A dark shape leaped from a building in the distance and landed on all fours. As it scrambled down the street toward us, more figures appeared from every direction, dark and howling.
Responding to some instinct, Murdock and I backed next to Meryl, who lounged in a casual pose against the wall. Murdock’s hand went to his gun holster, but Meryl put her own hand on his arm. “Don’t,” she said.
The figures bounded closer, bunching together until they formed an arc of rippling muscle and fur. They ranged along the edge of the circle of light, wiry lupine bodies darting forward and back, agitation showing in the orange gleam of their eyes. Some pulled up onto their hind legs and howled against the sky.
The vitniri surrounded us. An unsettling merging of man and wolf, they struck terror in everyone who crossed their path. The tang of musk and sweat hung in the air as they jostled each other, pawing and nipping at one another. Their howls and barks receded as one broke through the circle into the light. He loomed over us, peering down his long-snouted face as he licked his tongue across sharp teeth. “We came,” he said.
“We need to find someone,” Meryl said.
He growled deep in his throat. “Give us a scent. We will find him.”
Meryl gestured at me. “He smells like this one.”
I resisted the urge to shudder as the vitniri regarded me. The leanansidhe had called me “brother.” I suppose it made sense that Vize could be considered the same. I smiled. “Hi.”
He leaned in close, his nostrils flaring. His eyes never left mine as he sniffed, his face hovering over my face. He stopped and exhaled, a rancid odor hitting me as a plume of essence settled on my skin. His lips curled back, and I flinched as a long tongue snaked out and licked my cheek.
He retreated, hunching his shoulders as his body signature brightened around him in a halo of deep orange light. He arched his spine and roared. A cloud of essence burst from his mouth, curling in the night air as the pack around us barked and howled. They danced in the cloud, the essence heightening their excitement. They jumped and leaped down the dark street in several directions. The lead vitniri dropped to all fours, howled at me, then dashed up the alley.