I frowned. I might not have the best moral record going, but I liked to think I was at least several notches above a leanansidhe. “The pure,” I said.
She ducked her head, caressing the side of the bowl. “Yes, yes, of course. The pure, the innocent, the chaste, my brother.”
Pure and innocent meant one thing, but in the same sentence with the word “chaste,” their meanings shifted in one direction. “Are you telling me only a virgin can move it?”
Druse clutched her hands in excitement and brought them to her lips. “You are my brother, my brother. You see true. Druse will protect you in need. Druse will let you use the bowl in need.”
My responding chuckle confused Druse, but finding a virgin geasa in a hole in the ground in a modern city was so surreal, I had to laugh. The geasa bans were powerful taboos, hard to create and harder to break. The virgin geasa served many purposes, the least of which a pretty good indicator of how few virgins there were around. In the old days—the real old days—virginity was something lost almost as soon as puberty was gained. I wondered if Druse ever heard of teen abstinence programs. I knew that the failure rate for them was high, but there had to be a danger of at least one naïve teen who didn’t know everyone else was lying.
“What does this have to do with the darkness, Druse?”
Her hand trembled over the bowl. Purple essence welled up from within her, coating her fingers. It undulated across her palm, forming bumps that stretched and grew into wormlike tendrils. They waved in the air then dipped toward the essence. Druse closed her eyes and parted her lips as the tendrils drew up the essence. Something moved within her, an oozing behind her essence, a darkness that called to the thing in my mind.
I swayed with a touch of vertigo as the burning sensation in my right arm tightened and stretched. Druse gasped as her darkness touched the silvered essence from the bowl. The essence vanished, enveloped in darkness, no intermediate mingling or change. Just gone.
I clenched my jaw in pain as a sharp blade of darkness pierced my palm. The blade had no substance, a solid shadow that snaked and twined itself around Druse’s fingers. The sharp tip cut through her body signature, and a hot pleasure ran through me as I sensed her essence like a flavor in my mind. Druse slumped against the pedestal with a groan. The thing from my hand moved deeper, and the darkness within her rose to meet it. The two modes of darkness touched in a burst of black shadow. I shouted and wrenched my arm away, my silvered tattoo blazing through my jacket as the dark thing whipped back into my hand. I tripped backwards and fell, red and white lights flashing in my eyes.
Druse leaned over me. “My brother?” she whispered, her voice a raspy tremble.
She reached for my face. I shoved her away. “Don’t touch me.”
She cowered back, an uncertain smile flickering on and off her lips. “It is fine, my brother. The Wheel’s touch burns with ignorance at first, but in time it cuts with joy. You are strong, my brother. Druse slept many days after her first touch.”
I grabbed the edge of the pedestal and pulled myself up. “What did you do to me?”
Druse yanked at her hair. “Nothing, my brother! You asked to see. We are akin. We touch the light and bring the lack. It is the Way of the Wheel.”
I rubbed my arms. They were sore with the pain of heat and cold. “Can it be controlled?”
Druse crawled behind the pedestal and raised her head above the bowl. “The solitaires seek Druse, and Druse must answer. Enough for today, my brother. Return again and learn.”
She cloaked herself and vanished. Her essence trail faded into the far end of the chamber where the light didn’t reach. She was gone. I examined my hands and found smooth unbroken skin. My sensing ability traced a faded area in the middle of my right hand that wasn’t there before. Tiny flashes of silver essence winked here and there along my fingers. Bits of jasper from the bowl had attached themselves to me. In spite of the pain, I pushed my body essence against them, and they sifted to the floor like fine dust.
I backed away, not turning until I reached the room’s exit. My chest constricted as I strode away from Druse’s room. I wasn’t going to be stomach sick this time. As I wound through the tunnels to the exit above, my face burned with a feverish warmth. Yearning desire raced through me, my skin tingling with an almost carnal hunger for more of what happened—to savor and, yes, devour essence as if it were the only thing I needed for sustenance. The sensation of that moment had a kick like a chemical high, only deeper and more profound, as if nothing else would matter if I could have it again. It felt wrong, corrupt. In the cold slap of the winter air outside, I refused to release the shocked emotion hovering inside me. What had happened felt wrong.
I wanted to go back even as I staggered away.
26
All the next morning I nursed the mother of hangovers, the combined effects of alcohol and the flood of essence I had absorbed in Druse’s chamber. The pounding in my head left little room to think of much else for hours. As the cloud of pain lifted, I debated calling Murdock, trying to decide if it would be pushing him to talk when he obviously didn’t want to, or if he wasn’t talking because he wanted me to push. It’s hard to read him sometimes. As I sat on the subway train, I checked my cell, scrolling through the caller ID in case I had missed his call. I hadn’t.
The train stopped at Boylston Street, and I got out with several students. I lingered behind them as we neared the stairs. When I was sure no one was paying attention, I slipped into the train tunnel. About fifty feet in, the barrier between inbound and outbound tracks ended, and I crossed over to the opposite side. Hopping onto the narrow concrete ledge, I listened to the distant, hollow sound of a train. I had plenty of time before it arrived. At regular intervals, shallow niches opened in the concrete walls, safety spots for transit workers to stand if they were caught on the tracks when a train approached. I reached one shallower than the others and walked into the concrete wall.
The wall let me through, a static resistance running over my body as I slipped to the other side. Feeling along the edge of the first step leading down, I found the small flashlight Meryl had promised to leave for me. I turned the light on and descended the stone stairs. At the bottom, I turned right into a long, narrow tunnel. Sometimes it was lined with bricks or granite blocks, sometimes with bedrock. Few people knew that an entire network of tunnels existed under the streets of Boston. Meryl made sure no one knew about this one, her secret way out of the Guildhouse.
Light appeared ahead, and I turned off the flashlight. The end of the tunnel gave a transparent view into Meryl’s office. An archway framed the desk area where she was working, seemingly oblivious to my approach. I knew better. No one sneaks up on Meryl Dian. We’re clear. Come on through, she sent.
I slipped through another field of static into her office. From her perspective, it looked like I had emerged from a solid wall. I sat in the messy guest chair as she finished reading something on her computer. She swiveled toward me. “Sorry. Minor catastrophe with the network.”
“Anything I can help with?” I understood a big chunk of the Guildhouse’s computer network from my days helping the IT department build security. Meryl, on the other hand, apparently spent her free time shredding through it with ease.
She shook her head. “It’s resolved. We’ve been getting a lot of intrusion attempts for the last month. MacGoren thinks it’s the Consortium, of course. I’m pretty sure it’s a bunch of college kids from BU.”