Undone Deeds

by Del Franco, Mark

  “You know the problem with making a queen happy, macGoren? It’s only a matter of time before you make her unhappy. Maeve’s used you.”

  He laughed. “You think I don’t know that? That is what loyal subjects do, Grey. We exist to serve our liege. That’s something you seem to have forgotten.”

  “Oh, I haven’t forgotten. I was never her subject, macGoren. I have better things to do than lick someone’s boots.”

  “It’s that perspective that makes you a failure, Grey, why you have always been a failure. When you garner as much favor as I have, you acquire power. The trick, which you have never learned, is to earn enough power to become untouchable. I have Maeve’s favor. With the Elven King gone, nothing stands in her way. She needs me more than ever, and I will not fail her.”

  “This isn’t Faerie. It isn’t even Ireland,” I said. “Even if the humans side with her against the Consortium, they might have a problem with a queen using a U.S. city as her playground.”

  His eyes glittered with a yellow light. “You misunderstand, Grey. Maeve is done with you. The Elven King has been exposed. She no longer needs to lay blame at your feet. You have outlived your usefulness.”

  “Great. It’s nice to know she’s moved on. Now what do you want?” I asked.

  MacGoren lifted his arm to show me a dagger—my dagger, the one Briallen had given me. “Justice. Revenge. Call it what you like.”

  “Are you kidding me? You’re threatening me?”

  MacGoren held the dagger up, focusing his strange eyes on it. “Not at all. I’m stating the facts of the situation,” he said.

  With the speed that comes with the nature of a Danann, he swiped the dagger through the protection barrier, then back. I flinched, the slice of the blade leaving a stinging sensation on my cheek. I touched my face, and my hand came away with blood. Belatedly, my body shield activated.

  “That was childish,” I said.

  “This blade is quite interesting, Grey. Ancient, if I’m not mistaken.” He jabbed forward. It pierced my shield and nicked my ear. I backed away, putting as much distance as possible between myself and the barrier.

  MacGoren returned his attention to the dagger. “It may appear that my vision is damaged, Grey, and in some sense it is. They say when one sense is deadened, the others compensate. Take now. I see strange essence on this blade that I am sure is not visible to others. Notice the way it slices through the essence barrier as if it weren’t there.”

  He swept his arm in front of me. My shield creased and crackled with white light. He stepped back. “I was under the impression from Nigel that you no longer had a body shield.”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” I said.

  He pursed his lips. “True, but here’s something I can guess.” He held his free hand up and pressed against the barrier. His palm glowed with pale fire, and the barrier shimmered toward me. MacGoren stepped forward. “I’m willing to wager that your offensive abilities remain ineffective.”

  I steadied my gaze at him. “Drop the barrier and find out.”

  I didn’t see him move. Beneath my open jacket, the fabric of my T-shirt split with another swipe of the blade. MacGoren kept up that annoying chuckle of his like he was a cat playing with a mouse. “I’m sure you think you can best me in a physical contest, Grey, but I am not interested in a test of strength. I am interested in watching you suffer.”

  He stabbed again. I gasped and clutched at my arm. The swipe had cut through the leather to hit skin. “Coward,” I said.

  The door opened behind him. Keeva paused on the threshold, her expression alert and assessing. MacGoren cocked his head without turning. “Hello, love. I did not expect you for another hour or so.”

  “Obviously,” she said.

  Her manner indicated that Keeva didn’t know what was going on. She wasn’t in on his plan. He covered his discomfort with a feigned pleasantness that I saw through easily. I knew Keeva had to see it, too. “How did you know I was here?” he asked.

  She held up my old steel dagger. “This looked a little lonely. I was curious.”

  “I’m settling some old scores with our guest,” he said.

  Several emotions crossed her face—annoyance, anger, and, oddly, I thought I sensed fear. “I have a few myself,” she said.

  A sending fluttered through the room. MacGoren gave her a curious look, and, for several moments, sendings fluttered back and forth between them. MacGoren nodded with an understanding smile. “As you wish, my love. I’ve made my point, but you deserve the honor more than I.”

  With a flip of his wrist, he presented the handle of the dagger to her. Keeva stared at it, turning the weapon in her hand as if she had never seen a dagger before. She lifted her gaze and met my eyes. “It comes to this.”

  “This isn’t your thing, Keeva. You don’t work like this. Let me out of here,” I said.

  “You almost killed my child, Connor. How can I forgive that?” she asked.

  “It was out of my control, Keeva. I didn’t know what I was doing. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped,” I said.

  She moved within striking range, a step in front of macGoren. His faceted eyes glittered with a hungry anticipation. “How does it feel, Grey, to finally face the consequences of your actions?” he asked.

  “Keeva, listen to me,” I said.

  She shook her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “It has to be done.”

  I fell back in shock as she whirled and plunged the dagger into macGoren’s chest. Essence flashed off him, and the barrier went static with feedback. MacGoren staggered back; his jaw dropped in shock. He hit the wall and held himself there for a moment, hand held out to Keeva. She raised her own hand and shot essence into the dagger protruding from his chest. MacGoren convulsed and slid to the floor. She stood over him, her back to me, shots of red spiraling in her agitated wings. I struggled to find my voice. “Keeva?”

  She silenced me with a cutting gesture. We watched as macGoren’s body signature pulsed and faded, cycling darker until it became a dull haze. Keeva reached down and withdrew the dagger. She deactivated the barrier between us. “Keeva, why? What the hell are you involved in?”

  She leaned down again and slid my steel blade into macGoren’s wound. “Don’t talk, Connor. Don’t say a word,” she said.

  “But, you could have….”

  She slammed me against the wall, her eyes blazing. She pressed my other dagger against my chest. “I said don’t talk. I did what needed doing. Now take this and get out of here.”

  I took the dagger, and she shoved me aside. “What should I say about this?”

  She turned away, gathering essence into her hands. “Since I was the only one who knew you were here, I suggest you say nothing.”

  “Keeva, you killed him in cold blood, and now you’re planting evidence using my dagger. I’m not going to take the fall without an explanation.”

  She released an essence burst to cleanse her body signature from the room, leaving behind a sterile ozone odor. She stepped up to me again. “You want an explanation? You were seconds away from your own death, and no one knows you were here. I saved your life. That’s the only explanation you’re going to get from me. Don’t make me regret my decision any more than I do. Now get out.”

  “But….”

  “Go!” she screamed.

  28

  Outside the holding cell was a short hall, a door open to another cell, and a staircase. I ran up the stairs into a typical suburban kitchen, barren of any signs of someone’s living there. My cell phone and keys lay on the table, a subtle hint of Keeva’s body signature on them. It was almost three in the morning by the clock on the stove. I turned off the lights when I saw my reflection in the window. The backyard became visible, a small square of grass surrounded by a weathered stockade fence. Neighboring houses crowded near, triple-deckers and old wooden hovels with Victorian details. The yard had no exit.

  Down the hall, I peered through the sidelight window
s of the front door and recognized the general area. I was somewhere in Dorchester, the large neighborhood south of Boston proper. Nothing moved on the dark street, and the surrounding houses showed no lights. I slipped out as quietly as possible.

  Despite my racing heart, I forced myself to a nonchalant walk. I didn’t want a casual observer becoming suspicious. I pulled my jacket closed to hide the torn and bloody T-shirt. A block later, I took out my cell and called Meryl. “Can you pick me up?”

  “I don’t pick people up. I make them desire me, then reject them for being needy,” she said.

  “I’m in a bind here,” I said.

  “Really? You mean you aren’t disturbing me at work because you went grocery shopping?” she asked.

  “You’re at work? It’s 3 A.M.,” I said.

  “Shoot. I forgot to eat my lunch,” she said.

  “Can we get back to my apparently unimportant desperation?” I asked.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  A few cars passed the large cross street ahead. I recognized a deli on the corner. “You know where Georgie’s is on Dot Ave? Oh, and I could use a shirt.”

  “Be there in ten.”

  I made myself inconspicuous near a silver electrical box on Dorchester Avenue. Dot Ave was to Dorchester what Oh No was to the Weird, only longer. It stretched through eight or nine subneighborhoods, old villages that became home turf to various waves of immigrants. At any given time in its history, two or three gangs controlled the street, making it, depending on perspective, safe or dangerous. It was like that before and after Convergence. No matter the time period, urban cycles of prosperity and poverty repeated. It didn’t need the fey to do it. It made me realize that all the crap I stressed about, the empty promises of the governing powers, the endless grind of lives unfulfilled, were as much simply the nature of life as they were symptoms of social decay.

  I leaned against the building next to the box and realized that somewhere else in the city, other people were probably in similar predicaments to mine. Maybe they didn’t leave a dead body behind, but they’d fled a situation out of control, something that would lead to more problems in time. Shit happened. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but always and often, and sometimes there was nothing to be done about it. The thought didn’t make me any happier, but it gave me a little perspective as I waited alone on the desolate street. I bet myself that no one else had an intangible stone in their head or a gaping dark hole that sucked the life of everything around it. Those were my special treats.

  Meryl pulled up in her MINI Cooper, and I hopped in. Without a word, she handed me a black T-shirt, pursing her lips as she eyed my bloody clothes. I leaned across the console and kissed her as she knocked me in the leg shifting gears. “Thanks,” I said.

  She pulled a perfect U-turn and headed back toward the Weird. “Gods, I haven’t been down here in ages. Were you at the safe house over on Dewey?”

  That Meryl knew about the house didn’t surprise me. I struggled out of my jacket and pulled off the sliced-up T-shirt. “It wasn’t very safe,” I said.

  Meryl glanced at me. “So I notice. What were you doing? Your mom said you left the waiting room and never came back,” she said.

  I pulled on the clean shirt. “If I told you I was kidnapped by Brion Mal and macGoren tried to kill me but Keeva showed up and killed him and let me go so I called my girlfriend to come pick me up, would you believe me?” I asked.

  “You never told me you had a girlfriend,” she said.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. First, tell me about Cal,” I said.

  “He came out of surgery fine. The recovery is expected to take a while because of some essence and blood issue,” she said.

  “A full recovery?” I asked.

  She gave me a brief tilt of the head. “I’m not privy to everything, you know. I’m not family.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Meryl downshifted and turned off Dot Ave. “Why did she kill him?”

  “She refused to talk and threw me out.”

  “Did you call Leo?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  She made another turn, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Why not?”

  “I don’t think Leo needs any more to deal with right now. Gerry Murdock was involved at Eagan’s. He killed Shay,” I said.

  Shocked, Meryl slammed on the brakes. “Tell me that didn’t happen.”

  I looked out the window. “We were trying to escape. Shay was shot, and Uno…. ate him, I guess.”

  “That poor kid,” she said. Meryl liked people to think she was a mean hard-ass, but she had a soft spot for kids who got mixed up in the Weird.

  “Gerry basically confessed to it when he tried to arrest me,” I said.

  “Whoa! When the hell did that happen?” she asked.

  According to my cell phone, I had been under the sleep spell for over a day. “Day before yesterday, before I got the call about Cal,” I said.

  She started driving again. “Danu’s blood, Grey. This is a freakin’ mess. So, no police and no Guild for help. Can Eorla protect you?”

  “She’s my best bet at this point, unless I go to Bastian,” I said.

  “That might be the plan—force you to publicly align with the Consortium,” Meryl said.

  “Keeva’s using me for something. She didn’t have to kill macGoren to save my life. She planted evidence right in front of me to make it look like I killed him,” I said.

  “Then you need to keep a low profile until you see what she does.” She turned again, making it the fourth unnecessary turn since I got in the car.

  I twisted in my seat and checked the rear window. “Are we being followed?”

  Meryl pulled back onto Dot Ave. “Yeah. He’s being pretty obvious about it. Picked him up about a block after you.”

  She stopped at a red light and revved the engine. A block behind, a small dark car idled in the middle of the street. “Why is he sitting there?”

  The light turned green. Meryl hesitated, but the car behind us didn’t move. She drove on. “He’s pulling our chain. Someone wants you to know you’re being watched.”

  I slouched in the seat. “Yeah, big news flash.”

  We entered the Weird, driving down the back end of Summer Street over the Reserve Channel. In the odd way nighttime neighborhoods worked, we were safer in the industrial zone in the middle of the night than a few blocks away, where people lived. Muggers hung out where they expected to find people, which wasn’t warehouses closed up for the night. The people on the streets around the channel were people you didn’t want to mess with, and people who were not likely to help if you needed them.

  Meryl glanced at her mirrors. “Tail’s gone.”

  “Guess he either got his message across or he was too chicken-shit to come into the Weird,” I said.

  Meryl cut across Drydock Avenue and pulled up near the edge of the Tangle. She patted the dashboard. “Poor baby takes a nap if I drive in any closer. You going to be all right from here?”

  “Yeah. Want to come spend the night?” I asked.

  She leaned over and kissed me. “We already played man-on-the-run-meets-hot-chick-for-sex this week.”

  “Yeah, but this time I have wounds and bloody clothes,” I said.

  “Here,” she said. She placed her hand on my chest and built up essence. A warm layer of light spread across my skin. A burning sensation ran across the slash on my chest. Short pops of pain shot in my cheek and ear. The warmth slid away, and Meryl withdrew her hand.

  I kissed her again. The healing spell didn’t wipe away the injuries, but it pushed them past the pain and discomfort phase of healing. My druid nature would speed up the rest, and within a day the cuts would be gone. She put her hand on my neck and rubbed her thumb along my cheek. “Are you going to be okay?”

  I debated bringing up the whole fostering thing but decided not to, not tonight. I was tired and had a lot to think about. “Cal’s going to be okay now. That’s all that m
atters. I do want to talk to you about it, though. I learned some family history. It’s kinda world-altering.”

  She stared out the windshield. “Families usually are. Go get some sleep.”

  29

  The white noise echo of the city faded as I entered the Tangle, the sound of my footsteps becoming louder in the narrow space between buildings. The Tangle exaggerated everything, like a focusing lens for our baser instincts. What was commonplace to me—even before I ended up in the Tangle—outsiders saw with fear and wonder. The illicit tryst in a darkened doorway heightened the passion of the moment. The shimmer of essence in an eye held the promise of love or danger, maybe both. The swagger of a step promised confidence and menace. The bones of old buildings were at once beautiful and foreboding, flickering candlelight hinting of both refuge and danger. A stranger was as likely to hurt as help.

  Even my feelings about the place existed in a nervous tension. I didn’t like the pain the Tangle produced, nor the sorrow. Blood and hate flowed in the gutters as often as rain. Yet I couldn’t deny the rush of life that permeated the air, of dramas and fates unfolding in unexpected directions. People lived in the Weird, but they resonated with life in the Tangle. A lifetime could be lived in a single night.

  My thoughts played along those lines, musing on the last twenty-four hours that began with the fear of a hospital room and ended with death in a cell. I saw no irony that places that others found safe—a hospital, a residential neighborhood—were places of pain for me, and the Tangle, where dead bodies were statistics instead of events, had become a place of comfort. Until, of course, a blaze of essence nearly took my head off, and I remembered that I wasn’t safe anywhere anymore.

  My body shield flickered on the moment I sensed the attack, and I bounced against a brick wall as I ducked. The shot struck high, hitting a row of second-story windows. The essence raced in lightning streaks around the metal frames, ricocheting back on themselves before the glass dissipated them.