I closed my eyes a moment. If I continued the conversation, I was committing to something, or at least admitting to it. I was seeking help from a leanansidhe. I took a deep breath. “You said we touch the Wheel the same. How do you touch the Wheel?”
She threw her hands over her face. “We touch the outside from within, and the Wheel turns.”
I frowned. “If you think I believe you can turn the Wheel, you’re wrong.”
She screeched with laughter and scrambled up the side of the chair. “No one turns the Wheel, brother. It turns and turns, and we touch It where few dare to know. Not all who ride the Wheel ride the Wheel.”
“You’re lying. Even the Dead ride the Wheel the same as everyone else. It’s the Wheel of the World,” I said.
She tangled her hands in her hair. “Ah, stupid druid, sees the surface and sees nothing more. The Wheel is a wheel on both sides.”
The idea landed on me in stunning realization. I had spent my youth in study of the druidic path, learning from my mentors. The test of a true follower of the path was an intuitive understanding of what came next, the ability to move beyond receiving knowledge to attaining it on one’s own. We called it secret knowledge, the knowing of the Wheel in a fundamental way. I left my training years ago and stepped off the path for personal gain, but every once in a while, I was granted a flash of insight to the nature of the Wheel. I laughed in my throat at the realization the leanansidhe handed me. “There are two sides to the Wheel.”
She squealed as she dropped to the floor and clutched my knees. “You see, my brother! You see the within and without, and the Wheel lies between.”
I clenched my jaw at the wave of body odor she emitted. “Show me how you touch the Wheel,” I said.
She gasped in excitement, clutching her hands to her cracked lips. Those dark orbs whirled in their sockets, searching. In the blink of an eye, she vanished, surprising me with her speed. Seconds later, she returned, walking through the door and cradling something in her hands. She knelt in front of me with a rat that fought to escape, its sharp claws scratching her hands. “Shhh, shhh, shhh, little thing. Rest and receive,” she crooned.
Deep violet essence coated her hands. Tendrils formed, lines of purple light that burrowed into the rat. The rat froze in some kind of paralysis. With a moan of pleasure, the leanansidhe brought the filthy rodent to her cheek and closed her eyes. More tendrils waved out of her face where the rat touched skin. They pulsed with light, and the rat flinched as its essence seeped away. Something moved within the leanansidhe, something dark and impenetrable. It reached up from within her essence and sapped the rat’s essence.
I flinched as the dark mass in my head shifted. The vision in my right eye faded as pain stabbed at it. Pain from within. Something black leaped out of my face, an indistinct line of darkness that burned. The leanansidhe screeched and fell back, holding the rat toward me. “Yes, yes, brother, it is yours! Yours! Druse did not mean to take it from you.”
I fought the pain, pressing my body essence against it. My left forearm burned with the effort, the swirls of my strange tattoo giving off an uncomfortably pleasurable cold burn. The dark thing inside me recoiled, and I gasped. My vision returned to see a dead rat in a filthy hand inches from my face. By force of will, I didn’t slap it away. “Keep it,” I said.
The leanansidhe shook the rat. “No, yours! ’Sokay, ’sokay.”
I turned my head to the side. I didn’t know the ramifications of taking a gift from a leanansidhe, even if it was only a rat. I wasn’t interested in finding out. I stood, and she fell back.
“I said keep it.” I stumbled toward the door.
“No! Stay, my brother! You see the truth of it now! Stay with Druse, and we shall aid and comfort each other. Druse will show you the way beyond the pain to the pleasure of the Wheel,” she called out.
My head pounded beyond a migraine. I held my aching arm against me as I retraced my way in the dark, not thinking of anything but escape. Without the flashlight, I followed the path in my memory, bumping into walls and tripping over changes in levels of the floor. Passing through the masking ward in the warehouse basement, the dark mass in my head gave me one more kick and stopped spiking.
I ran the rest of the way—across the basement, up the stairs, and through the warehouse. The door slammed against the outside wall as I shouldered through it. I landed on my knees on the snow-covered sidewalk and threw up in the street. A wave of dizziness swept over me, and I fell into the blessedly cold snow. My face pressed against it, the icy shock of it soothing the pain in my head.
A light flashed rose against the snow in the dead white night. “Really, Connor, this throwing up in the gutter is a bad habit.”
I tried to talk, but a retching sound came out. Joe grabbed at my jacket collar. “Connor! What’s wrong?”
He flew up, pulling me into a seated position. “I’m okay,” I said.
He hovered in my face. “Screw that, you look like day-old shite. Your essence is . . . I don’t know what it is. It’s rippling like a wave.”
I got my feet under me and forced myself off the ground. Joe grabbed my coat to steady me. “It’s stopping,” he said.
He didn’t have to tell me. The dizziness receded as I took a great gulp of air. “I’m fine. Just didn’t expect that to happen.”
Joe whirled around me. “What to happen? Where the hell have you been?”
I laughed. “Hell might be one answer.”
He leaned closer to me face and sniffed. “Are you drunk?”
I didn’t want to discuss what had happened. Joe can be overprotective, and I didn’t want a scolding. I started walking. “Yeah, I am. I must have taken a wrong turn or something.”
“But what was going on with your essence?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe alcohol poisoning? I feel fine now. Honest.”
He twisted his lips doubtfully. “You’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
He spun around in the air. “So—let me tell you about my night.” I let him chatter on. It was a good distraction from the strange emotions I was having. He talked all the way back to my apartment, a tale of drinks, song, a short wrestle with another flit, an amorous encounter, and more drinks. Joe did know how to have a good time. His busy night was a fortunate coincidence. It didn’t take much trying to get him to go home, so I could be alone.
Inside my building, I hit the elevator call button. The old cage was slow as hell, but I was so tired that I didn’t want to climb the stairs. I heard a clicking sound, but the elevator didn’t move. I peered into the shaft. It was stuck in the basement. I sighed and walked up.
I wanted to reach inside my head and scrub my brain. My gut feeling was right. The leanansidhe had recognized the darkness inside me. Recognized it because it was inside her. I saw it beneath her essence, the black, hungering thing that reached out for the rat’s essence. My eye ached in memory of it. Whatever was inside me responded, wanted what the thing inside the leanansidhe wanted.
The idea revolted me. What the hell had Bergin Vize unleashed when we fought almost three years ago? Maybe unleashed inside both of us? He was damaged, too. I saw that when I met him in TirNaNog. Did he struggle with the same darkness? Did he feel the same frustrations and pain? I hoped to hell he did. If he weren’t so intent on destroying the Seelie Court—hell, destroying the world—none of this would be happening. How someone raised by Eorla Kruge could become so twisted baffled me.
My essence-sensing ability jumped as something moved in the apartment. The security wards hadn’t gone off, but something was there. Several wards were keyed to alert the Guild, but considering their more-intense-than-usual annoyance with me lately, whether anyone would show up these days was a good question. The wards wouldn’t stop a truly powerful fey person, but they would slow him down long enough for me to figure out how to protect myself.