Unperfect Souls by Mark Del Franco

Author:Mark Del Franco [Franco, Mark Del]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780441018383
Amazon: 0441018386
Publisher: Bill
Published: 0101-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

20

Inside, heat and chaos enveloped us. In the flickering half-light, fey of all stripes filled an industrial cathedral of interlocking steel beams and arches. Shouts filled the air with the roaring vibration of cheering spectators. The clank and crash of metal on metal created a shrieking bass line. The air smelled of oil and chemicals, the burnt-ozonelike residue of spent essence and the reek of unwashed bodies. Rhythmic screams of someone in deep pain pierced through it all.

“Cozy,” I said.

“You should be here on a busy night,” Meryl said.

Half the time I thought Meryl said things like that to emphasize the point that I didn’t know everything about her. The other half of the time, I hoped that was true. The reality was I didn’t know everything about Meryl, and I never would. It was the nature of the fey to move in and out of each other’s lives without knowing who the other person had been a generation ago. Long lives trailed long histories, some good, some bad. The fey either accepted that about each other, or they ended up being alone.

No one paid us any attention as we threaded through the crowd on the main floor. I had been to a few places like it before, underground clubs and safe houses where the persecuted hid to be themselves among their own kind. I loved being part of the fey subculture, but I had the luxury of not needing it. I shared a certain sensibility with the lost and shunned in the Weird, but in places like this, I realized a level of acceptance existed that I would never achieve among the solitaries. I was a druid, an acceptable fey to the mainstream. My face wasn’t scarred or scaled, feathered or furred. My skin color fell into the peach to brown spectrum the outside human world understood and accepted.

I brought my own prejudices, too. I recoiled instinctively at times, thought entire species unattractive, or feared people simply by virtue of their race. I could tell myself all I wanted that my attitudes weren’t the same thing as the human racism that was based solely, inexplicably, on skin color. All trolls did like their meat raw and weren’t particular where they got it. Merfolk occasionally did drown air-breathing lovers in the throes of passion. The fey—all fey—were filled with as many of the vicious as the virtuous. My fears and biases might be more reality based, but they were still fears and biases.

“What the hell?” Meryl swung her pocketbook around to her chest and pulled up the flap.

Joe crawled out. “You really need to clean out your purse.”

“It’s not called the Bag of Doom for nothing,” she said.

“How long have you been in there?” I asked.

He fluttered between us, taking in the sight of the ranks of solitaries hanging in the framework of the warehouse. “Just now. I had to come in tight because of all the security these guys have. Last time a vitniri licked me, I licked him back.

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