Blood rushed to my head as Dylan helped me up. I leaned against the wall to steady myself, feeling the stone flow onto my fingers. My skin felt alive, every nerve ending firing. I breathed deeply.
“You were screaming,” he said.
Dylan’s essence illuminated the corridor. No evidence of my attackers remained. “I killed them again, Dylan. The ones from that day. They came for me, and I killed them again.”
He brought his hand to my chin, tilting my face from side to side. “You had smoke coming out of your eyes. Dark smoke like nothing I’ve ever seen. It had no essence, like it wasn’t even there.”
My face felt the memory of it, something I recognized but didn’t understand. “The thing in my head came out. It’s still in me, though. I can feel it more than ever. It feels bigger. I think it’s growing.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me back the way we had come. “We have to get you to Gillen Yor.”
I pulled away. “No! Powell’s going to kill her, Dylan. I can’t let that happen.”
He looked about to argue, then nodded with a sad smile. “I know. Whatever’s happening to you, Con, you’re still who you are. Let’s go.”
We passed a section of hallway with high concentrations of essence. Burn marks scorched the walls. An intricate web of binding spells hung in tatters, already fading. “They fought here.”
Anxiety settled over me as I sensed the essence trail. They moved together, but Meryl’s signature was faint while Powell’s blazed.
“This was part of her plan somehow,” Dylan said behind me. “There are too many binding spells. She must have set them a while ago.”
The hallway ended at a spiral staircase of stone. “Powell waited ten years for this. She’s a contingency planner. She saved Meryl for last so Viten could kill his killer,” I said over my shoulder.
I took out my cell phone. No signal. We were too deep underground. The stair wound about its central axis, turning over and over, progress that felt like a standstill. A signal bar flickered into view on my screen. I called Murdock, but the connection broke. The steps vibrated under our feet with the dull rumble of a subway train. We reached the top, an incongruous metal door with a modern spring bar. It popped open into the decrepit remains of an ancient bathroom.
A glamour spell snapped in place behind us as we left the room, hiding the door behind a wall of dirty tiles. I recognized the narrow platform of Arlington Street Station, two blocks away from the Guildhouse. My cell signal stabilized, and I called Murdock again.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m on the Common. The place is a zoo,” he said.
“Powell’s escaped. She’s got Meryl, and I think they’re headed for the fairy ring. Can you get up there?”
“I’m not far. We have a command post at the monument.”
“Meet you there.” I disconnected.
A train arrived as we reached the stairs. A throng of fey disembarked, pushing to the exits with the excitement of children. Dylan and I shoved our way up the steps, fighting elbows and wings and nasty glares. We exited to the corner of Arlington and Boylston.
Police guarded the entrance gates of the Public Garden, blocking everyone from entering. The streets were mobbed. We joined the crowd heading for the Common, hundreds of people of every conceivable species of fey imaginable.
At the end of the block, the Common glowed with more radiant essence. The light burned brightest through the bare limbs of the trees where the land sloped up to the towering Civil War monument and the fairy hill beyond it. Fairies of all kinds filled the sky, their wings flaming with essence as they swooped and swirled in dance. As we ran down the lane that passed the bandstand, the crowd swelled, slowing down as more people flooded into the park. Everyone wanted to be on the hill.
I stopped, amazed. An inverted funnel of misty gray light twisted into the sky, long wisps of the Taint revolving around it.
Dylan spoke in my ear with awe and wonder in his voice. “It’s really opening, Connor. The veil is opening.”
I pushed ahead. “That thing better be exit only.”
CHAPTER 29
Thousands of laughing and shouting people packed the blocked-off streets around the Common. Groups gathered and merged with a confusion of harps and lutes, drums, horns, and electric guitars on portable amps. Anything that could make a noise, someone banged, blew, or strummed-elven death dirges clashing with Irish bands playing tympani punk, dwarven horns blasting against Gaelic windpipes against police whistles and megaphones-even a mariachi band on the baseball diamond. Fey and human alike danced and cheered, humans in Halloween costumes, fey in the traditional garb of their clans.
On the lower end of the Common, police manned barricades separating the open field from the rise of the hill where the Civil War monument and fairy ring stood. Dylan showed his Guild badge to an officer to get us into a cordoned-off emergency path that wound its way through the crowds. Another security perimeter was set up around the monument at the top of the hill. Police, fire, and EMT communications units ranged in the rough circle, creating an island of relative calm in a sea of chaos. Marble statues representing war and peace stared down from the war monument’s pedestal in mute testament to the fact that things hardly ever truly change.
The essence within the fairy ring churned, a concentration more dense than the night Dylan and I argued. It was so intense, the unaided eye could see it. I didn’t need a sensing ability to see it. No one did.
Murdock waited near a temporary fence that was yet another barricade to the fairy ring. His body shield shimmered over his long camel-hair overcoat, the hardened crimson essence providing a level of safety I could only dream about. With all the colliding essence on the hill, any fey who noticed a body shield on a human probably dismissed it as a trick of the light. I didn’t like the grim look on his face. “They went in about ten minutes ago,” he said without waiting to be asked.
My chest tightened at the word “they.” I gripped the metal fencing and stared into the fairy ring. “Was Meryl all right?”
He cocked his head to listen to something on his radio before answering. “I didn’t see her myself. I’m told she was mobile but dazed-looking. Powell had a doctored Guild badge that got them into the inner perimeter. With all the Guild types in there, no one thought anything was wrong. They were last seen near the edge of that column of light. There was a bright flash, and they vanished.”
“I want to get in there,” I said. Murdock didn’t hesitate. Dylan and I followed him to a break in the barricade, and between their two official passes, no one tried to stop us.
Researchers and politicians roamed the restricted area around the fairy ring. The politicians were there for the photo op and the privilege of saying they could get in because someone thought they were someone important. The researchers were primarily fey, primarily from the Guild. Briallen and Nigel worked in separate groups, which was no surprise. Any other time, I would have loved to hear them argue back and forth about what was happening.
Flits flew around the thick essence like multicolored moths to a flame. Higher up in the air, fairies from the larger clans pressed closer. Fairies were air folk. Airborne essence attracted them and fed their essence-manipulating abilities. Drawn by the concentration of essence, the Taint had gravitated to the funnel, ambient wisps of the control spell that deepened in color as they collided and weaved together. A pressure headache sprang up behind my eyes. If the dark mass in my head didn’t like concentrated essence or the Taint, it definitely didn’t like the two of them together.
Murdock pointed to a spot that looked no different from the rest of the funnel. “This is where they went in.”
Shapes moved within the fog, faint impressions of bodies and faces. The funnel essence radiated a distinctive resonance unlike any I knew. I touched it and found not a misty vapor but a slightly repulsive texture like cool, pliant skin. I pushed, and it dimpled in under the pressure, not separating or tearing.