City of Ghosts

Chapter Seventeen

Okay. First things first. She had to get the hell out of that room before it turned into an iron-bound oven. Already her shirt clung to her body and her bangs stuck to her forehead in an itchy clump.

No, wait. Really first things first, she needed her pills. Her hands shook as she popped the catch on her pillbox, grabbed three Cepts, and crunched them into a bitter, chalky mess. In her haste to wash them down she spilled water on her shirt. Whatever. Probably not a bad thing, considering she was trapped in a fucking inferno.

And even if she hadn’t been she didn’t give a damn. The water got her pills down her throat, and chewing them up had given her a small dose, and that was all that really mattered. Almost all that really mattered. The fog in her head lifted a little, she could think again, focus again.

Now to get out of the room. Her palm practically sizzled when she placed it against the door. How could the flames spread that fast?

Another explosion answered that question. Her heart jerked in her chest like an insect caught in a spiderweb. That’s what she was, a trapped insect, struggling to stay alive even though she would probably fail.

She skirted the toad-thing on the floor again to check the window. The bars didn’t want to give under her hand but—there appeared to be a fire escape. Not directly outside the window, but close enough. If she could get out she could probably reach it.

Not like she had much choice, right? She’d take her chances leaping for the fire escape rather than be roasted slowly in a sealed room.

Except—Damn it! Damn it fuck damn it! Lauren. Where was Lauren?

And did she really care?

No. No, she didn’t.

But Lauren didn’t deserve to burn to death in a stinking, shrieking slaughterhouse. And how the hell would Chess explain to the Grand Elder that she’d saved her own ass without having any idea what had happened to his daughter?

She had to at least try to look. She had to at least try to get the door open—if they investigated, which they would, they’d know if she’d gotten out of the room or not, and that she should have been able to. She wanted—needed—to be able to say she’d tried, and to say it clean.

Her lube syringe was almost empty, but not quite. One small piece of luck, at least. It only took a couple of seconds to pick the lock, even with her none-too-steady hands.

Deep breath. She tugged her sleeve down over her palm, ignoring the don’t-open-the-hot-door-you-dumbass warnings ringing in her head, and yanked the knob.

The month before, she’d had to visit one of the spirit prisons beneath the Church, a horrible fire-bright cave of misery.

This was worse.

The noise had not abated. Smoke stung her eyes, burned her throat. Black smoke, gray smoke dimmed the painful sharp light of the flames. Animals still screamed. The stench of burning hair and roasted flesh filled the air, it tasted of death and ashes and made her gag. Half the building was given to the fire. She could hardly see from the screaming orange blaze and the sweat running into her eyes and blurring them.

But even the fire and the noise and the smell she could have dealt with. Would deal with. What chilled her blood despite the heat were the ghosts.

The Lamaru—at least some of them—had been Hosting. She knew that, or would have known if she’d thought about it. What she hadn’t thought about was that when they died, a psychopomp would come for them—but the ghosts to which they were bound didn’t “register.” No psychopomps. No one to summon the slaughterhouse’s psychopomps. And she sure as fuck wasn’t going near whatever the Lamaru had made, even if she could find them on the main floor.

Ghosts milled about down there, flickering out of existence when they passed through the hot flames, reappearing moments later when the heat energy abated and they were able to take form again. A clump of them struggled up the stairs, their horrible faces turned to her, their hollow eyes focused on her with hateful intensity.

In their hands they clutched knives and chunks of cement. Armed ghosts. Deadly ghosts, coming right at her.

In the psychopomp room she’d be safe from them. They wouldn’t be able to get through the iron walls and door. She could turn right around, work on the bars in the window, get it open and reach the escape … and leave Lauren to die.

“Lauren! Lauren!” Why not scream? Wasn’t like she could hide her presence, not with the ghosts staring right at her. In fact, this could be better. Get them watching her mouth, make them pay attention to her face so they wouldn’t see her slip her hand into her bag.

“Cesaria!” It hardly sounded like Lauren’s voice; thin and high with an edge of panic. Still, it was Lauren, and that—plus the asafetida in her fist—was a relief.

What wasn’t a relief was that Lauren’s voice seemed to be coming from the offices at the opposite end of the walkway. The main stairs, the one the ghosts climbed, stood between herself and Lauren. She’d have to go through them.

She chanced a quick look in that direction, taking her focus off the ghosts. The offices on this level had solid walls—perhaps they too were iron-bound—but narrow horizontal windows interrupted them just below the ceiling. Cracks stretched across one of them; as Chess looked, something hit it, pushed the glass a few inches farther out. Yes. Lauren was in there.

The ghosts had reached the top of the stairs. Beneath the sweat now coating her entire body, her tattoos itched and burned.

But beneath that was the sweet soothe of her pills, an entirely different kind of warmth spreading through her, chasing the worst of the darkness and giving her some strength in return. They were just a couple of fucking ghosts—she did this shit for a living, didn’t she?

She sure as fuck did. Okay. Her fist tightened around the asafetida as she eyeballed the luminescent dead advancing on her. Seen through them, the flames looked dimmed. Shadows formed behind them like bruises on their nonexistent skin. The black holes of their mouths opened.

She flung the asafetida, twisting her upper body and giving it to them right in the eyes—where the eyes would have been, anyway. “Arkrandia bellarum dishager!”

The generic Banishing words made them flicker a bit. She hadn’t expected the words to actually work, not without any other ritual tools or anything to give her control over them. But the asafetida bound them in place. It wouldn’t last long, but for now they were frozen, and the ones behind weren’t at the top of the stairs yet. This was her shot.

The strap of her bag dug into her sweat-slicked skin as she pushed past them, through them. Damn, she never would have thought the frigid, bone-deep chill of a ghost’s body would be a relief, but it was. If she hadn’t been so desperate to get out of that place—and if she hadn’t been at least halfway sane—she might have been tempted to hang out there for a minute or two.

But she was at least halfway sane, and more than that she was at least somewhat intelligent, and she reached the door of the office before the ghosts re-formed themselves. “Lauren!”

The door rattled in its frame. “Stand back!”

Stand back? Those ghosts would come at her again any second, and she was almost out of asafetida, and Lauren wanted her to—

The bullet sent wood chips in all directions, took a chunk out of the wall three inches to Chess’s left. On instinct she threw herself to the floor in the opposite direction, then regretted it when her cheek hit the sizzling metal.

Another shot. Lauren flung the door open and practically yanked Chess’s arm out of its socket pulling her up.

Shit, what the fuck had happened to her? Everything in the building glowed like the inside of a furnace already—hell, it wasn’t like the inside of a furnace, it was the inside of a furnace—but Lauren resembled a madwoman. A madwoman with a bruised face and a wig made of blood-soaked cotton wool. Her torn clothing stood in mute testimony to what at least might have occurred; the rage in her eyes almost made Chess drop back to the floor.

She’d seen eyes like those before, usually right before a fist made contact with her face or a boot with her ribs.

It didn’t seem to be directed at her this time, though, and Chess couldn’t blame her. If she hadn’t been delightfully insulated from those horrible emotions—which meant all of her emotions, all of the time, really—she’d probably have had the same sort of look on her face.

But that wasn’t important at the moment. “You have a gun.”

Lauren, holding said gun out before her like a divining rod, gave Chess a narrow glance. “You know I have a gun.”

“Yeah, but—you have a fucking gun. Why didn’t you blast out of there before? Why the hell did I have to risk my life to come get—”

“Fire escape.” Lauren wrapped her sticky, sweaty hand around Chess’s and dragged her to the window. “I had a fire escape.”

Broken glass crunched underfoot; Chess felt it but couldn’t hear it over the general din. “What do you mean, you had—Oh.”

No chance of any more escapes out of that window. A few scraps of twisted metal, rough-edged and pitiful, still clung to the sheer stone wall; fifty feet below, the rest of the ladder lay in a crumpled heap, dust still swirling around it.

Beyond the wreckage of their hope for a quick, simple escape the parking lot teemed with life, illuminated by flames. A few animals had managed to save themselves: a couple of cows, a gaggle of pigs and sheep, a number of dogs—how many had there been? Too many.

Whatever. Chess couldn’t bring herself to worry about the Lamaru plan at that moment. Save her ass first, then think about the Lamaru. Or rather, then think about the Lamaru in some manner other than how much she’d like to wring each and every one of their necks personally for this. Especially Erik Vanhelm’s.

She knew nothing about the escaped dogs, whether they were just generic Labs or hounds like those the Church used, or wolves like the executioner’s had been, or worse. Hell, they could have been magic-cranked pit bulls for all it mattered. No matter how tough or bloodthirsty they were, she gave them ten minutes at the outside before they met their deaths. If the black sow had been an unexpected treat, this was the sort of event that became Downside legend: The night that food walked right past, practically begging to be killed and eaten.

Lamaru still ran around, shouting, their tattered robes flapping behind them. A few of them argued and fought, wrestling with one another—No, wait. They weren’t wrestling with one another. Who the hell were those people?

“The door to the hall—the one we came through earlier—is blocked off. I started to climb down the escape and another bomb, or whatever, went off at the foot of it. I barely made it back inside.” Lauren held up her hands. Patches of raw skin crisscrossed them.

“I called the rest of the Squad, and the fire department. They’re on their way. Did you have a fire escape? Where were you?”

“In the psychopomp room. There’s an escape there—shit, they might bomb that one, too. We need to go.”

Damn. They needed to fight the ghosts first. Chess saw them over Lauren’s shoulder, seeping through the walls. They’d had to leave their weapons outside, of course, but it wasn’t like they couldn’t find more. “Shit!”

She dug in her bag for the rest of the asafetida, for her graveyard dirt and what little supply of iron filings she had. If the Lamaru bombed the other fire escape, too, they’d have no way out of there, not if the office door was truly blocked. Sure, Lauren had called the fire department. The possibility even existed that one of the slaughterhouse’s neighbors had called them, although they were probably too busy killing the escaped animals or planning a looting.

But Downside didn’t have a fire station; what was the point? It would take at least fifteen minutes for an engine to arrive, and by the time it did, it wouldn’t matter. The fire was eating the slaughterhouse, crawling along every inch of wood and plaster like a starving, handless beast. Already smoke drifted through the office wall. They had five minutes, ten at the outside, if they hoped to avoid the City.

Less than that, of course, if they couldn’t do something about the five ghosts taking full form between them and the door.

Lauren ducked, yanked her raven skulls from her bag and set them on the floor. Her already bleeding hands touched each one, lightly, leaving a faint smear.

Chess fought down the panic rising in her chest at the sight of them and dug out her plastic bag of salt. Psychopomps probably weren’t a great idea, but they didn’t have much choice, did they? Just because there’d been a couple of accidents, just because she’d been right about the Lamaru’s plans, didn’t mean Lauren couldn’t control her ravens.

Of course, technically she shouldn’t have been able to control the ravens anyway—but whatever.

And standing there gaping like a moron wouldn’t do anybody any good. Chess found her Ectoplasmarker and popped the cap, tapping Lauren’s shoulder with the other hand. Power zinged up her arm; for the first time she could remember, the feeling bothered her. Too much stress, too much rage and fear slithered along the underside of that power. Whatever had happened to Lauren in this room, it hadn’t been good.

But Lauren’s eyes didn’t reflect much of those emotions. She glanced down and nodded; she’d made a pile of herbs on the tile. While Chess watched she lit them, then filled her hand with more.

“Go!”

The ghosts leapt forward at the same time Chess did, which was exactly what she wanted them to do. She jumped to the side, letting salt from her Baggie pour onto the floor. If she could just keep them focused, keep them watching her eyes—

Icy cold sliced through her brain. One of the ghosts’ hands. For that second she was blind; agony ripped through her skull. Instinct and Church training kept her focused. She ducked, ready for the next freezing swipe and better able to ignore it when it came.

Behind them now. Constant cold as their hands passed through her, tried to grab her, hit her. Their rage infected her, made her already speeding pulse race faster, until it felt like she’d taken a bagful of Nips and a heart attack was waiting to pounce.

But she’d almost finished the circle.

Lauren’s voice rose behind her, behind the ghosts. Shit, why was she starting her summoning, the circle wasn’t finished yet—

Glass shattered. Pain lit her nerve endings like thousands of white lights as tiny shards of it embedded themselves in her skin. The windows high up on the walls. They’d exploded from the heat. Smoke poured in through the empty spaces.

Shit. And double shit, because not all the bits of glass were so small. A particularly large and sharp piece caught the light as one of the ghosts lifted it; she tried to jump out of the way but didn’t quite make it. A slice on the back of her right arm reminded her—as if she needed it—of the penalties for poor reflexes.

Hey, blood would help set the circle, right? Yes. Look on the bright side. Bright-side Chess, always sure in the knowledge that things would turn out just fine.

She flung herself onto the desk, dropping salt along the way. The beginning of her circle lay on the floor at Lauren’s left hand; all she had to do now was close it so the ghosts were subdued and mark them.

“I call you!” Lauren shouted. Chess, stunned, tumbled to the floor with a painful thud she hardly noticed. What was one more bruise? Far more important were the rising skulls, the bodies forming in the air covered with sleek black feathers. Her entire body went cold, colder than it had even moments ago when she was playing keep-away with the dead.

“What the fuck, Lauren? The circle isn’t—”

Too late.

The ravens rose into the air, screeching their death cries and drowning out Chess’s voice. The circle wasn’t finished. The ghosts weren’t marked. The psychopomps were free to latch on to any soul in the room.

Huge heavy wings stirred the smoke. Chess’s eyes watered and stung. She didn’t want to cough, didn’t want to draw their attention, but she couldn’t help it. Flames ate into the ceiling of the office.

“Benchitak! Benchitak!” Lauren shouted, words of power Chess didn’t know but that sent more of Lauren’s ugly, strong power rippling over her skin. Could she control the ravens that way, just with her power?

Two of the ghosts disappeared into the ragged hole between the worlds Lauren’s ritual had opened; the remaining ravens flapped around the other three, their wings punishing the air. The ghosts tried to flee back through the walls but the salt line, incomplete though it was, held them long enough for the ravens to catch them, sharing the extra ghost between them.

Chess’s muscles relaxed. She hadn’t realized how tense she was, how much she’d expected the ravens to grab her, to drag her off.

Church magic. She could still believe in Church magic. It felt good.

What didn’t feel good, of course, was the volcano heat she stood in, or the rawness of her throat, or her dry, itchy eyes and her hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. Time to get the hell out of this place before it collapsed around them—on top of them.

She’d been standing close to the wall—too close. Any second that thing was going to burst into flames like a Haunted Week effigy, and it would take her with it.

Lauren still stared at her psychopomps, watching them disappear through the opening between the worlds so intently that Chess wondered for a moment if the woman didn’t have some sort of psychic connection with them. She’d done that once herself with birds, the month before. The night Terrible—

No. No fucking way. The last thing she needed to do at that moment was to start having those thoughts again. Not when her own death was so close that she could smell its hot smoky breath and only her fear of the City—and her absolute refusal to let the Lamaru beat her, those sleazy fuckheads—kept her from simply collapsing on the floor and letting it have its way with her.

That thought, more than anything else, galvanized her. She grabbed Lauren’s wet sleeve—she wasn’t the only one soaked in sweat—and pulled.

“We need to get out of here. Come on, I haven’t heard another explosion.”

“Just let me get my …”

“What?” Chess looked down. Looked down, and saw the empty floor at Lauren’s feet. The smoke hadn’t reached the lower half of the room yet; she could not blame what she saw—what she didn’t see—on blurred vision or optical illusion or anything else.

Oh, fuck.

The skulls weren’t there. The ravens still had form.

They’d gone to the City and taken their skulls, and they still had form, still had physical bodies. They’d disobeyed Lauren, disobeyed their training and instinct and just about every rule of magic Chess knew.

Her head refused to turn; she didn’t want to check to see if the hole between the worlds had closed behind the ravens the way it should have. The longer she didn’t look, the longer she could lie to herself—always an important skill to cultivate, and she was an expert at it—and pretend the hole had closed, that she couldn’t still sense it there, feel its faint chill on her slick skin.

She forced her neck to work, and turned toward the hole just in time to see the ravens burst through it and head straight for her.