Undone Deeds

by Del Franco, Mark

  I picked up a copy of the Weird Times, the neighborhood rag, and leaned against the wall to read about a rise in assaults along Old Northern Avenue. The police had no comment. An editorial implied that the crimes weren’t being investigated by the Boston P.D. or the Guild. Nothing new there. When priorities were made at either organization, things like the Weird fell to the bottom of the list.

  The brownies griped about the ID lines at the police checkpoints at the Old Northern Avenue bridge into the city. They seemed to be some kind of service staffers for downtown hotels and faced the daily annoyance of starting out for work an hour early to account for security delays.

  Belgor nodded and hummed as he listened, filing the trivia in his mental archive of all things Weird like a bloated spider sitting on a vast web of information, to be used for barter and gain. Sometimes he made money, and sometimes he saved his considerable skin. He always survived.

  The customers bought lottery tickets and wandered out. Belgor’s eyes shifted within fat-folded lids, his long, pointed ears flexing down. We tolerated each other, our association based on needs we wished we could satisfy elsewhere.

  “You should clear your sidewalk, Belgor. Someone might get hurt,” I said.

  He folded thick arms over his ample stomach. “I do not have a sidewalk, Mr. Grey.”

  He was right, technically. Calvin Place was too narrow to have sidewalks. I dropped the newspaper on the counter. “Kind of interesting.”

  His eyes scanned the headlines. “Fighting has always been a way of life here.”

  I turned the newspaper back to face me, pretending to read the article. “True. And death,” I said.

  Belgor pumped his fleshy lips. “You more than anyone knows that.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was a dig or not. “I have a question for you, Belgor. Actually, it’s your expertise I need to consult.”

  Belgor rolled his wide expanse of shoulders. “I am a simple store merchant, Mr. Grey.”

  “Can we cut the bullshit for once, Belgor? I need an answer on something, and if you know something, I’ll be out of here faster than this conversation is going.”

  His ears flexed down and back. “And here I thought this was a social call from a dear old friend. What can I do for you?”

  I leaned down and withdrew the dagger from my right boot and placed it on the counter. “What can you tell me about this?”

  Belgor’s face smoothed in surprise, and his ears shot up. “Where did you get it?”

  “That’s not important. I want to hear what you have to say without any context,” I said.

  As he reached for the dagger, his hand trembled. A few runes etched in the blade lit with a cool blue light, and Belgor withdrew his hand. “A moment,” he said.

  He maneuvered his large mass sideways behind the corner and ducked behind the curtain that led to his back room. He returned wearing an antique pair of jeweler’s glasses, a wired contraption that hooked around his ears. Thin metal arms jutted from the bridge and ended with polished lenses that hovered several inches from his eyes. He used a thick cloth embedded with glass to pick up the dagger. “It’s an old blade out of Faerie. The markings indicate it has passed through several hands.”

  “Enchanted swords were a dime a dozen in Faerie,” I said.

  “Not like this. There are ancient magics on this blade from more than one source. I do not recognize some of these runes,” Belgor said.

  “Does it have a name?” I asked. Swords—important ones anyway—often had names in the deep past. They commemorated great battles or where they were fought, famous people who owned them or died. The dagger was hard to read. While runes covered parts of the blade and pommel, they seemed related to spells. I hadn’t been able to tease a name out.

  Belgor hummed, tilting his head up and down to adjust his vision through the lenses. “I see many references to chaos and….” He frowned. “It is hard to say. The phrasing is old, like Old Elvish or even Gaelic. Break? Notch? Perhaps, a gap between two forces.”

  “Gap?” I said. That’s the word Brokke had used when he spoke of the darkness within me. He called it the Gap that arose in the moment between the end and the beginning of the Wheel of the World.

  Belgor shifted the blade and sighted down its length. “Perhaps. How did this come into your possession?”

  “It was a gift, a loan of sorts,” I said. When Briallen had given it to me, I had sensed its age and value, and thought it was too much to accept. I took it on the condition I could give it back to her when I was done with it. I wasn’t sure I regretted that decision now, but it might not have been one of my best. I had no idea at the time that I was binding myself to the blade with a geasa—a form of taboo that would have ruinous consequences if I broke it.

  Belgor placed the dagger back on the counter. “Someone did you no favor. I do not know this blade, which, I must say, concerns me. There is something of the Wheel about it, something dire. I do not think it serves the wielder but purposes beyond our ken. How much do you want for it?”

  That made me laugh. “Like I said, it’s not really mine to give.”

  “I do not think it is anyone’s to give, Mr. Grey. Things like this appear where they need to. It will be difficult to move, but I am sure it will find its next possessor,” he said.

  “I wanted confirmation that it was as old as I thought it was,” I said.

  “Older than any I have seen. I would not use it. Such things appear at times of war and chaos, and bode no good thing,” he said.

  I pushed away from the counter. His words echoed Brokke’s too much for comfort. “Thanks, Belgor. Keep your head down. I’d hate to see you get caught in the middle of a war zone.”

  Belgor nodded. “I have lived a long, long time, Mr. Grey. When you realize war is imminent, it is already too late to stop it.”

  When I reached the door, he called my name. “It occurs to me that you do not seem yourself.”

  It would be an overstatement to say that Belgor sounded sincere, but that he was inquiring about me personally surprised the hell out of me. “How do you mean?”

  “You seem to be lacking a certain passion in our interaction. I am in your debt, as you know. If there is anything I can do, let me know.”

  I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t smiling, so it wasn’t all warm and fuzzy between us. I had covered up his involvement in a pretty high-profile crime that would have sent him to prison. Whatever Belgor’s motivations, he saw that as an obligation to me. If even he thought I wasn’t myself and was concerned that I wasn’t, then maybe I needed to take a step back for some serious reassessment.

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Outside, the harsh, white sliver of sky between the buildings cast the street in stark, grim light. Spring was having a hard time wrenching winter out of the air. I hesitated at the end of the street as nonchalantly as possible without looking paranoid. Checking my surroundings was second nature at that point in my life and, given recent events, was fast becoming my first nature.

  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 pictur
e 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.

  The power plant was a vital component of the local utility grid, and any major crime in the area prompted precautionary measures. Even though there was no fire this time, an alarm had gone out, and a ladder truck idled on standby as a precaution.

  As luck would have it, the truck was from Kevin Murdock’s station. He sat on one of the running boards, talking and laughing with his coworkers. As Briallen predicted, he was none the worse for wear from his deep sleep, probably better. His body signature glowed a deep bronze among the humans. He stopped laughing when he saw me. His face became a suspicious mask as he tracked my approach to the temporary police barrier.

  Kevin, along with his brother Gerry, had decided I was the cause of the tragedies that had struck the Murdock family. I was present when their father—the former police commissioner—was killed. It didn’t matter to them that he was a dirty cop who had brought about his own downfall.

  They blamed me. They also blamed me for destroying their family by having an affair with their mother. It had happened years ago, when I was young and green, hormone-filled and stupid. I didn’t even know the Murdocks then. Leo, who was the oldest, was still in high school then if I had my math right. I had no idea of the trouble the affair caused until years later. But they blamed me for that, too, despite the fact that their mother lied to her husband and initiated the affair. No one wanted to believe their parents were flawed huma
n beings. Scott Murdock and Moira Cashel were as flawed as they come. I survived both of them, so somehow I was the villain.

  I ignored Kevin’s stare as I waited for a police officer to let me through. Gone were the days when I sauntered past checkpoints, secure in the knowledge I had the authority if not the connections. Too much bad blood existed between me and the Boston P.D. these days. I hadn’t killed Scott Murdock, but that didn’t stop his son Gerry from encouraging the lie on the force. He wasn’t respected like Leo was, but that was what made him a problem. Gerry appealed to the rough edges of the blue, the cops who chafed at the rules. They saw criminality everywhere they looked and acted on it. I didn’t want to give them any more reason to pull out a Taser.

  Leo waved me over to where the body lay. Not many other people stood near. The few people who were nearby kept their distance. Jumpers never made for pretty death scenes. The higher they fall from, the less pretty. The dead guy was a Danann fairy, so that mitigated the damage. Dananns have more resilient bodies than humans. He was still dead, though, his wings a tangled and torn mess, a leg bent at an angle legs weren’t meant to bend.

  “We’re going to lose this one fast.” Wearing gloves, Murdock held open a small billfold that showed a Guild ID. The Guild might not take cases in the Weird any longer, but it protected its own. The last thing macGoren wanted was his allies on the police force investigating a murder that might expose Guild secrets.

  I recognized the name and face of the victim. “He was a low-level administrator.”

  I crouched by the bloody body. The strong whiff of alcohol wafted upward. Dananns had a propensity for whiskey. Back in Faerie, it wasn’t available in quantity, so drunkenness was more an accepted reprieve from the high life than a question of alcoholism. Not so in the post-Convergence world. Whiskey was everywhere, cheap and easy to acquire. More than a few Dananns ended up in the Weird because they had fallen to the bottom of a bottle.