With a gleam of gold, she let some essence show in her eyes. “We are declaring this area under our jurisdiction. Move or face the consequences.”
Murdock frowned. “With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t believe you have any authority over me.”
She gestured with the spear to her bodyguards. “Take them into custody.”
As they moved, Murdock muttered into his radio and stepped in front of me. He pulled out his gun. “I am giving you a lawful order to lay down your weapon.”
The shock on Ceridwen’s face was priceless. She raised her spear. “I said take them into custody!”
The lead agents raised their hands, essence sparking in electric arcs as they powered up. Murdock’s body shield bloomed like a ruby flame. Whether he planned it or not, it had the nice effect of covering me in its field. Dozens of police officers materialized around us, guns drawn and pointed at Ceridwen. That’s what happens when you give orders without coordinating with the local force. The agents hesitated, their urgent sendings tickling at my mind as they refrained from firing. At least they hesitated. Left to her own devices, Ceridwen looked ready to beat anyone who came near her.
I felt Nigel Martin coming before I saw him. The Taint accentuated everyone’s essence, but I would have sensed my old mentor without it. He pressed between two agents and stopped between Murdock and Ceridwen. He looked at Murdock, but he addressed Ceridwen. “What is the meaning of this, Your Highness?”
Ceridwen lowered the spear. “Druid Martin, you know the peril here. These people must be removed.”
Ever calm, Nigel clasped his hands behind his back and tried to stare me down.
I shrugged. “I’m deferring to the local authorities, Nigel. Talk to the guy with the gun.”
Nigel glanced at Murdock. “Detective, you are risking an international incident.”
“I don’t take orders from the Guild,” said Murdock. “Unless I get orders from someone I do report to, this woman is going to be arrested for threatening a police officer.”
“We have diplomatic immunity,” Ceridwen said, barely containing her outrage.
“You’ll get a phone call,” said Murdock. How he kept a straight face when he said that, I’ll never know. His brothers in blue didn’t even try. I heard more than a few chuckles.
“Get her to back off, Nigel,” I said.
He glared. “Connor, you continue on this pointless course of defiance. Lives are at stake here. Move aside, or I will move you personally.”
“The only life at stake here is Meryl Dian’s. I don’t answer to you, and I sure as hell don’t answer to Ceridwen,” I said.
She pushed forward and raised the spear like a club. “I will not stand for any more insolence from you and that traitorous bitch!”
That did it. She went a word too far. “I’ve had it,” I snapped. My mind opened to the spot where the spear burned so brightly, tasted the essence that lay there, felt the power that called to me even as I called to it. “Ithbar.”
The spear jerked in Ceridwen’s grip. Her eyes widened, but she refused to let go. Amazingly, it dragged her toward me. She turned golden bright as she called up essence to resist my command.
“Stop!” Nigel shouted.
Nigel thrust his hand forward and a ball of white light shot out of his palm. I ducked as it broke into a tangled net shooting right for me. Murdock’s body shield flared and absorbed the hit. I couldn’t believe it. The bastard had really tried to hit me with it.
Ceridwen gripped the spear with both hands, but she could not restrain it. Inexorably, it pulled away from her. When it came within reach, I grabbed it. A fierce cold Power raced up my arm. Inches away from each other, Ceridwen and I locked gazes. Her eyes vanished within featureless orbs of gold as she fought for control, trying to batter my mind into submission. The spear shuddered between us, our arms jerking with its struggle. I refused to relent, demanding it come to me. The silver filigree on the spear reacted to the sudden influx of so many different energies around it. It rippled on the shaft of the spear, coming alive like dancing drops of mercury. Icy strands of it oozed around my fingers and raced up my forearm.
An angry, animal growl came from deep within Ceridwen’s throat as she called more essence to bear. The dark mass in my head surged through me. Darkness flowed out of my hand and touched the spear. Essence exploded between us. Ceridwen screamed in rage and frustration as the power of the spear flung her into her bodyguards.
Meryl had told me the spear was a true silver branch. I had to hope she was right and see if it would grant passage into another realm. I spun toward the fairy ring and thrust the spearhead into the veil. A tear ripped the haze, liquid yellow light bursting out and sluicing down on me. My head blistered as the dark mass jumped. The spear responded to my will again, and the hole wrenched wider at my thought. Tainted essence slithered and flapped around the opening. It dove for the white line of power in my hand, the darkness mass and the spear both convulsing at its touch. I threw myself into the rip, and my head exploded in a thousand knives of pain. A raging torrent of ebony and emerald, white and gold smeared across my mind.
I fell into the veil between worlds.
CHAPTER 30
I staggered under an assault of searing pain. Essence whipped around me in a kaleidoscope of burning colored light. Wind raged through the air, a high-pitched wailing that tore at my mind. I propelled myself blindly through the radiant bands of power, desperate to get away. The darkness in my head and the brightness in my hand warred with each other and the air, flinging me in one direction after another. The maelstrom stripped me down to impulse and instinct until the desire to escape the pain ripping through me was all I knew.
The onslaught receded, slowly, grudgingly. The ground stabilized, and I stumbled into an empty space, an eye of calm within the storm. Around me, a dense, smoky haze rustled and shifted, a barrier that flashed with sparks of essence. Exhausted, I leaned on the spear. All the joints in my body ached like they had been pulled apart and snapped back together. A constricting pressure throbbed along my left arm. I pulled off my jacket. The silver filigree from the spear had replicated itself around my forearm.
The wind died. In a milky gray sky, bands of darker gray essence scudded like ragged clouds after a storm. Light flashed, visible light, not the colored manifestations of essence. A booming sounded in the haze, vibrating the ground in a rhythm that grew stronger with each increase in volume. The dark mass in my head shifted one way, then another, as if trying to avoid a trap. Something moved through the mist, something huge, with an essence signature more intense than any I knew.
The presence drew nearer, becoming brighter and brighter in the vision of my sensing ability. A dark shadow figure formed within the shadows of the haze, the shape of a man wrapped in a vast aura of light. The haze drew away from him like the parting of curtains. Shards of essence encircled his head like a crown. Over a long red tunic, he wore a cloak that shifted through hues of yellow. He had the look of the Danann about him, if it were possible for the Danann to look more radiant than they did. He furrowed his brow when he saw me. “Such a small dark thing ripples the Ways.”
He had an enormous intensity, more than the tree spirit I had met, more than anything I had ever met. I didn’t have much experience with kobolds, but he didn’t feel like one or any other fey I knew. I held the spear defensively. “Viten?”
Surprise etched across his face when he saw the spear, and a shudder ran through him. His cloak came alive with motion and melted into his body. He grew larger, and sank cross-legged to the ground, his hair turning dark, his eyes showing the threat of a wild animal. Essence flowed from his temples and branched from his head with a burnished light. “Do you come to mend the Ways or to bend them?”