Pittsburgh Street stretched in both directions. Not far off was a door to a basement where I had hidden the stone bowl that generated essence. The dark mass in my head yearned for essence, and the bowl had provided enough to take the edge off my pain. It also filled a deep physical need, one that had clear addiction issues revolving around it. When I had first picked the hideout location, it was convenient to my apartment. In a few short blocks, I was able to sate the urge. Now, my apartment wasn’t safe, and the Tangle was far enough down Old Northern that a quickie wasn’t feasible. It would have been a shame to miss the opportunity.
On this end of the neighborhood, the streets between Congress and Old Northern were longer than the average city block. Warehouses fronted on Stillings and Pittsburgh, with a long central alley between them. At various points along the way, access lanes allowed egress to the back. I ducked down the nearest one, no more than a pedestrian tunnel four feet wide.
The main alley was a picture of waste and abandonment—dumpsters long gone to rust, wood pallets gone gray, and businesses just gone. Belgor’s was the closest thing to a legitimate business on the block. At night, the darkened warehouses came alive with music and dancing down near Congress. Things people didn’t like to think about happened on this end, both day and night. I walked past boarded-up doors and windows, picking up my pace the closer I got to the squat.
A gunshot echoed up the alley, the sound slapping back and forth against the bricks, growing fainter and fainter as it reached me. Gunfire was not unusual in the Weird, during the day it was less common, though.
I hesitated, considering what I was about to do. I’d told myself I wouldn’t do it anymore, wouldn’t seek out the essence in the stone bowl like some junkie after a fix. I’d told myself that it wasn’t me that wanted it, but the dark mass in my head. I’d told myself that giving in to the urge was giving in to the dark mass, giving in to baser wants that I had left behind. I’d told myself all that, yet found myself drawn to the bowl like a moth to flame.
I put my back to the alley, still hesitating. I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to give in to the dark mass, give in to its control. I wasn’t going to be manipulated like that.
A shot rang out, and this time I jumped at its nearness, the distinct sound of a ricochet off metal close by, then something heavy falling to the ground. I pressed back against the wall, scanning the length of the alley. Row upon row of dark, shattered windows stared back at me. A blaze of essence-fire sliced above the roofline from one side of the alley to the next. Another shot went off farther away, followed by more essence-fire. Whoever was shooting was moving off, the fey pursuer not far behind.
I slipped into the welcome darkness of the next pedestrian alley, a low anger coiling in my chest. I could have been killed in a random shooting all because of a desire that would not go away. I needed to find my focus again, find a purpose for myself other than drifting from one favor to the next.
I wasn’t going to find that in the bottom of a stone bowl.
9
After leaving Belgor, I did what I do whenever I’m conflicted. I ran. I changed into shorts and a sweatshirt, and jogged the neighborhood. The good thing about hiding out in an essence-saturated neighborhood like the Tangle was that I didn’t have to run very far to go very far. I ran the same loop five times to put some mileage in, but each time the streets shifted, not always in a dramatic fashion, but enough to notice that something had changed—different building façade here, new pavement there, even the way the sunlight filtered down. It was the same route each time, only the visual cues had changed.
The dark mass in my mind yearned for essence and caused me pain without it. When I had found the stone bowl, I found a way to feed that yearning and lessen the pain. I didn’t like it any better. The desire itself became consuming. Instead of dealing with pain, I had to deal with compulsion. The more I gave in to that compulsion, the less I cared about how I satisfied it.
That road led to death. I had almost killed Keeva macNeve, my old partner. I was tapping her essence to feed, but I let my mind deny it. My conscience couldn’t, though, and I stopped. Because of me, she had to go to Tara to heal.
I didn’t need a shot of essence to stem the pain, at least not anymore. Having an unexplained dark mass in my head was bad enough, but now I had a heart-shaped stone nestled against it. The stone and the darkness seemed in their own battle, a stalemate for control of my pain.
Meryl called them metaphors, symbols for things we could not explain. The dark mass, to her thinking, was a manifestation for something we couldn’t describe. The faith stone was a manifestation of power that was sometimes tangible—a stone—and sometimes not—a spot of glowing light. The darkness and the stone had found each other or been attracted to each other and ended up having a happy dance in the neighborhood of my hypothalamus.
Even though I had not given in to the urge to take a hit of essence like a junkie, the fact that I almost did made me angry. It made me angry with my situation. With everything else going on in the world, I needed to find an answer to what had happened to me and how to fix it. Time and again, I found myself doing a favor when I thought someone else’s situation needed more attention than mine, only to have my life take a backseat to the world. So I ran in circles to work off the stress and frustration, another metaphor for my life.
Since moving into the Tangle, I was amazed at how fast rumors flew. Even given the fey’s ability to do sendings, which was a way of sending thoughts wrapped in essence to people, news traveled fast. The Tangle was a cluster of intrigue and danger, the worst the Weird had to offer. People who lived there relied on information to survive, and the network of communication was larger than I had ever suspected.
When a dead body showed up at the edge of the neighborhood, random sendings flew through the air. I caught a general broadcast, meant to be heard by anyone nearby. I had the news about the body before the first emergency vehicle had been dispatched.
I hiked over to the scene, the corner of Summer and Elkins, where the city power plant was located. A dead body meant Murdock would be involved, and I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the day I had been at his house.
Police vehicles gathered at the intersection. The power plant looming above bore signs of damage. Soot marks from a fire a few months earlier still streaked down the blank six-story wall, which was painted a strange pink—to mimic brick, I supposed.
The fire had been a false alarm. Bergin Vize had been hiding in the power plant, protected by solitary fey who thought they were helping one of their own. In truth, the solitaries were being used by the Consortium in a proxy war against the Guild. The Guild, in turn, manipulated the Dead of TirNaNog into flushing Vize out of the complex by setting it on fire.
The scheme set off a night of rioting and other fires like nothing Boston had ever seen. The solitaries—always the scapegoats for fey transgressions—fought back against the combined forces of the Guild and the National Guard. The Dead were in it for the bloodbath. Since they were already dead, dying didn’t mean much to them. They resurrected with the next day’s dawn.
The riots produced profound changes. Eorla brought the solitaries under control and started her own court. Ceridwen, a murdered Danann underQueen, ruled over the Dead in disguise as the King of the Dead. The Guild and Consortium backed down, but not before I lost control of the darkness in my head and almost killed everyone. It was not fun. The entire Weird had become a crime scene that night, so another dead body at the power plant was no more than a coincidence, but an interesting one.