Druse trailed around the pedestal, staring at me, waiting for a reaction. On the natural outcropping sat a rough-worked ward stone shaped like a bowl, a rich green color with dark red splotches. Heliotrope, an ancient jasper stone used for a variety of rituals, mostly involving healing and balance. The spots gave it its more dramatic name: bloodstone.
“This is beautiful, Druse. Where did you get it?”
She placed her hands to either side of the stone and rubbed at it. Essence pooled inside, a silvered white that coiled and swirled like liquid clouds. “It’s mine, brother. She gave it to me, didn’t she? Long ago. She had no need of it anymore. I found it and kept it.”
Sounded like an interesting story, rife with contradiction. And beside the point. “What do you do with it?”
She dipped two fingers in and withdrew them dripping with the translucent essence. “Save it to save Druse. In the slack time, the danger time, when they seek Druse, the bowl feeds and nurtures. They will seek you, my brother, and bring you harm. You must hide then, hide and wait and drink from the bowl to live.”
I paced around the pedestal, Druse mimicking my steps on the opposite side. “Where does the essence come from?”
“It gives it, it does. Druse gives to it, and it returns tenfold. It is a good thing, no?” she said.
A fine quality piece of jasper that beautiful was worth a fortune. That it was some kind of capacitor and amplifier ward pushed its price off the charts. Something this big could potentially output unlimited essence over time. I allowed myself a small smile. Now I understood what Zev meant the night Murdock vanished. He said to tell Jark the solitaries didn’t have what he was seeking. The bowl in front of me was a powerful artifact, the kind that could have only come originally from Faerie. And it was sitting in an unguarded room with a simple barrier field around it. A fey with moderate abilities could collapse Druse’s shield. Sekka’s body had been found nearby. She must have been guarding it. “You leave it out like this?”
She laughed, a raspy bark of sound. “No one can touch Druse’s bowl. Try it, my brother. Try to take it.”
I reached out a hesitant hand. A hot burning sensation ran down my right arm from the dark mass in my head, and a cold constriction pulsed through the tattoo on my left forearm. I’ve learned those are warnings of more pain. Before the silver tattoo appeared, the dark mass in my head rejected external essence and contained my own inherent essence within me. It was why I couldn’t touch my abilities. The silver tattoo seemed to want the opposite, hungering for essence and releasing it. Something about the bowl was confusing both of them.
An electric static ran over me when I touched the stone. Nothing more painful than surprise. I put my other hand on the opposite side and tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge. Not a fraction of an inch. I dropped my hands. “Is it bonded to the bedrock?”
Druse laughed as if I had made an incredible joke. She lifted the bowl off the pedestal with no more effort than necessary for its weight. She replaced it. “Only the pure can take the bowl, my brother, and only the unpure ever seek it.”
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.