Unshapely Things (34 page)

She slipped a knife from her belt and hefted it in her hand. Glancing at me once, she paced again without speaking. A bead of sweat slipped down my spine. I watched her move back and forth. She looked down at her knife again. She knew. She knew about Corcan. But macDuin was dead. Someone else had to be controlling Corcan. A new dread gripped me, and I pressed as hard as I could against the ward-spell.

"No," I said. It came out strangled and the spell bore down around me again.

Keeva smiled broadly. "Very impressive. I think it's time to put you out of your misery, don't you?"

She direw the knife. My heart hammered in my chest as I watched the hilt leave her hand. The knife flew at me with nauseating slowness, light catching the blade as it soared across the room. It's been said that the doom of the world can rest on the edge of a knife. For once, I believed it. The knife whistled past my ear and stuck into a beam somewhere above me. A loud report rang out as something fell. I stumbled free and almost landed on macDuin.

I turned in confusion. Another ward lay broken on the floor. I spun back to Keeva. She just stood there with her arms crossed and a smile playing on her lips.

"That... wasn't.. .funny!"

She shrugged. "Sorry. I couldn't help myself."

I put my dagger back in its sheath and slipped it into my boot. Given my condition, it wouldn't be much help against Keeva anyway. "What the hell happened here?"

She walked over to macDuin and squatted by his side. "He was like this when I got here. Heart's gone." She stood, wiping her hands on her thighs.

"Why did you let me walk into a trap?"

She poked me in the chest. "I didn't let you do anything. The front door was open when I got here, and I thought you had done something stupid like go inside. I got rid of the ward at the top of the stairs, but the angle was bad for the other one, so I went around to the balcony. I'm surprised you didn't sense it."

I rubbed my nose. "I've been having trouble smelling anything."

Keeva bit her lower lip and looked away. "Promise you'll let me explain?" I cocked my head to the side in confusion. She reached out and placed her hand on my forehead. I felt an odd shifting of pressure, as though I had ridden in a fast elevator and my sinuses were catching up a second late. I could breathe again. I sneezed and gagged once very hard. Between macDuin's exposed organs and the killer's essence, the stench in the room was overwhelming. I grabbed Keeva's arm.

"What the hell did you do to me the other night?"

She wrenched her arm away with no trouble and stepped away from me. "I saved you a trip to the hospital. When macDuin realized you knew Gethin's essence, he wanted me to block you. I refused, so he sent his henchmen after you. You should thank me. I got them and macDuin off your back."

"Gethin? Then he knew Gethin is here?"

She looked at me in confusion. "Of course he did."

"I thought Lorcan was using Corcan to commit the murders."

She shook her head. "Wow. No, Connor. You're way off. Corcan didn't commit the murders. Gethin did. I thought you figured out the ritual? Gethin's dying from genetic defects. MacDuin told me he had a spell to cure himself. He's more fairy than elf and was murdering the prostitutes for their hearts. He needed them to purge his elfin essence. As best we could tell, he needs Corcan as a final purging vessel to accept his elfin essence."

"Then why was macDuin trying to end the police investigation?"

She stared at me in confusion. After a moment, she nodded. "Connor, Gethin's name is macLorcan. MacDuin and Gerda Alfheim had an affair during the war. He's macDuin's son."

Stunned, I lowered myself onto the couch. The image of macDuin laughing at me in the basement of the Guildhouse rose in my mind. He had realized I didn't know. And he didn't tell me. And he had intended to frame me. I looked over at the body and tried to feel bad he was dead.

"I can't believe this. He was willing to let people die just to protect his son?"

"MacDuin was trying to stop him, Connor. He didn't want anyone to know. He was afraid the press would find out the killer was a son he had with a radical activist. Connecting him with Gerda Alfheim would bring his old war collaboration ties out again. He really had put all that behind him, but his reputation would never have recovered again. Especially not with Maeve. With the Fey Summit winding down, she can't afford anyone being suspicious of her motives."

"You were helping him."

She smiled. "I did more than help. I caught the bastard. Two days ago. MacDuin was keeping him locked up here until after Midsummer so he couldn't kill anyone else and complete the ritual."

Now I understood the sensation of more wards in the house. A closed door at the back of the room vibrated with blocking wards. I went over to it. "This is where he kept him?" Keeva nodded. I opened the door. Inside was a small alcove room with just a bed. Above it was a window with a shattered frame. Gethin must have gone out that way and set the trap for macDuin. That wasn't what grabbed my attention, though. A pentagram was painted on each of the four walls and centered on the ceiling was a fifth. Gethin had drawn them in his own blood.

Realization swept over me. "We have to leave right now. I know where he's going to do the ritual."

Keeva gestured at MacDuin. "The ritual is over, Connor. Gethin got his last heart from his own father. He's probably fully fairy by now."

"Think, Keeva. The hearts are not here. This is about more than healing Gethin. Didn't you wonder about the pentagrams?"

I handed her the spell Meryl had given me. The color drained from her face as her eyes moved down the page. She gave the paper back. "This isn't the spell macDuin showed me. Where do you think Gethin is?"

"Castle Island. Shay was going to take Corcan there for the fireworks. Gethin must be meeting them."

She strode onto the balcony, shots of light beginning to course into her wings. In the gathering dusk, she glowed above me as she lifted into the air. I stepped beneath her, and she hooked her hands under my arms from behind. My stomach dropped as my feet left the tiled flooring. We soared above the building.

The setting sun smeared streaks of orange and red across the horizon. To the east over the harbor, the sky had faded to a flat gray. Too anxious to wait for full nightfall, people were already shooting off cheap fireworks, little bursts of color to the south over the Weird and South Boston. We made straight for them.

Black clouds sprang up in the east, lightning flickering among them. A gust of wind hit us, and Keeva veered sideways. Reacting to my fear, my body shields materialized. Keeva almost lost her grip on me as the shields made me harder to hold. She dug her fingers painfully into my arms as I tamped the shields back down. We were out over the water, the downtown skyline slipping past. The surface of the harbor shimmered in a haze of white foam. A stronger gust of wind battered us, and we dropped a dozen feet before Keeva recovered. We skimmed near the surface of the water, where fish were running in all directions, sending up a frenzied spray. People on boats scrambled to pull in their sails.

Keeva began chanting, trying to use the wind's energy to work with her. Her flight stabilized as we shot over the Weird. Old Northern Avenue was a blaze of color and movement. People jammed the length of the street, dancing and flying in celebration. Keeva kept us just above the fray, weaving in and out of other fairies. We joined a small convoy of people flying out to Castle Island for the fireworks. Away from the distractions of the Weird, apprehension replaced excitement on faces turned toward the dark cloud bank that had spread rapidly over the harbor.

Castle Island came into view, its shores lined with hundreds of people. Fort Independence spread out below us, its five sides of granite rising thirty feet above the crowd. It was the biggest damn pentagram in the city. A green parade ground should have been visible at its open center, but a sallow haze of light glowed instead. The essence that radiated off it pulsated with malevolence.

"I can't get through that," Keeva yelled. She banked to the right and brought me down in the parking lot. On the opposite side, more people filled the causeway that looped around Pleasure Bay. Keeva and I pushed our way through the crowd.

I pulled out the cell phone and called Murdock. "Where are you?" I said.

"I'm at the front gate of Fort Independence." I closed the phone. Someone let off firecrackers, and the crowd roared its approval. I grabbed Keeva's sleeve and pointed at the fort. I had to yell to be heard. "Front gate!" She nodded once and grabbed me again. We launched over the crowd and flew up the hill. Coming around the nearest rampart of the fort, I could see Murdock scanning the crowd, his hand resting on his holstered weapon. Keeva dropped me right next to him.

It says something about the world we live in that Murdock didn't blink an eye at my arrival. "What's going on?" he asked.

"The end of the world. What happened to Shay and Corcan?"

Murdock jerked his thumb at the closed gate. It stood about fifteen feet high with iron hinges. An unlocked chain dangled from the door rings. Even with all the fey milling about, I could feel the sealing spell on the door. "They went in there. Door won't budge."

I turned to Keeva. "It's a spell, not a ward."

She rested her hand on the panel of the door to sense the level of power. Pulling her hand back, a ball of white shot from her palm and raced around the edges of both doors. She tugged one of the rings, and the door opened. I guess they weren't expecting high-powered company.

Inside, a passage glowed with the same sickly light we had seen above. A wrongness throbbed on the air that even Murdock could feel by the look on his face. He unholstered his gun, gave us a nod, and went in. Keeva rolled her eyes and pushed past him. "That gun isn't going to do much good here, big guy."

The far end of the corridor framed the parade ground in a simple arch. In the center, a naked, bone white figure stood, fairy wings undulating out from either side of him. Dark almond-shaped eyes stared from a worn face of ecstatic triumph. Seeing Gethin macLorcan in person made me realize that Shay's police sketch really had looked nothing like Corcan Sidhe. I had been seeing only the superficial similarities.

Shay lay crumpled on the ground just on the edge of the lawn. Ignoring him, Keeva walked onto the grass. Murdock trailed behind her with his gun drawn as I leaned down to check Shay. I couldn't tell if he was breathing. I wondered if he knew how over his head he had been. Pulling my dagger, I stepped up behind Keeva. The blade felt warm and alive in my hand, its runes grabbing the light around it.

Gethin had drawn himself inside another pentagram. Spirit jars sat at the five points, filled with herbs and water and the unmistakable shapes of hearts. Corcan lay at the center, his head near Gethin's feet. His body was rigid, and he stared straight up without seeing.

"You've done enough," said Keeva.

Gethin brought his gaze down, inspecting her with coal black eyes. His ears were not so much rounded as stunted points.

"I've just begun," he said. The voice. At once raspy and clear, like someone who had been smoking all night and talking too loud. It wasn't a voice to forget. Neither was his essence. Stinkwort and I had been so close the other night. We could have saved the last victim and even macDuin if we had been faster. His essence still felt wrong, but it had become muted, more fairy in nature, with a distasteful edge to it. As I moved closer, the hair on my arms bristled. He had already sealed the circle around the pentagram and erected a protection barrier. Most sane people did that with themselves on the outside.

"You don't have to do this. You got what you wanted," I said.

His eyes shifted to me. "What I wanted? No. What I wanted was to claim my mother's noble heritage. Instead, I must wear the disgusting wings of my traitorous father."

Keeva had circled around the pentagram. She kept one hand near her waist and flexed at the wrist. She was gauging the strength of the shield. When she reached the point opposite me, she shook her head. She hadn't found any weakness.

"You can't do this," Keeva said.

Gethin's face twisted into a sneer. "Only you think in terms of cannot." He spread his arms out. "Look at my power, de Danann. Look at your own. You waste yourself. If more of you had joined my mother's people, we would be ruling this place. Instead, you cower before the humans, content to take the dregs they offer."

"Let Corcan go. You don't need him anymore," I said.

"I need him to open the way. I am keeping my word to my mother, unlike my father. She found me a cure. Now we will cure the world." He began to chant. I recognized the spell. Good ol' Meryl had hit the nail on the head. Gethin was opening a door into chaos. Wind picked up in speed. Outside the fort, someone shot off a roman candle that glimmered red-orange through the hazy light of the protection barrier Gethin had erected. More explosions went off as the first display of fireworks appeared overhead.

"This spell will kill you!" I shouted. He faltered for a moment.

"You're wrong. It opens the door for The Defeated Who Will Conquer. They will ally with us, and we shall rule together." He had the fevered gleam in his eye of the rabidly insane. There wasn't going to be any reasoning with him.

He began chanting again. He raised a hand, and a burst of yellow light tore through the barrier and into the sky. It seemed to fly up forever and scatter among the clouds. A heavy silence spread around us except for Gethin's guttural muttering. Off in the distance, a moaning broke out. The ground vibrated with a deep thrumming. A torrent of air pounded down out of the sky, throwing us off our feet.

I lifted my head against the pressure. A towering wall of water ringed the walls of the fort, a dark, malevolent green surging toward the open sky all around and above us. Gethin had called up the sea. The wind died down. Confused shouting came from outside the walls, and more stray fireworks arced against the darkness.

Keeva flew to my side. "We can't penetrate the pentagram. The shield's stronger than anything I've seen."