City of Ghosts

Chapter Thirty-eight

“It wasn’t me!” No time to roll away, she raised her hands and grabbed his wrist.

He was too strong for her; the knife continued to descend, slowed but not stopped. “Elder Griffin, it’s me, it’s Chess, that wasn’t me, it was Lauren—”

Desperately she tried to meet the cold blue chips of his eyes, to make him see her, who she really was.

It didn’t work. Shit. Her stomach twisted; she brought her legs up and kicked his arm away from her. Kicked him away from her with a crunch that reverberated in her mind, digging itself down deep into that hidden place where guilt and shame constantly bubbled and seethed. His arms around her at the Binding, holding her, his soothing voice …

No time to stop, no time to try again. He was already staggering back toward her. Instead she ran through the thickening smoke, passing through ghosts, knocking against unfamiliar bodies. Dogs brushed her legs but ignored her, searching instead for their dead prey.

And the dead prey appeared, drawn by the tang of blood and life in the air, gathering in ever-deepening hordes and pushing their way through. Getting aggressive. Cold hands reached for her, tried to grab her. The iron candlestick in her hand grew hot from the constant warding, so hot it was hard to hold.

This was useless. She could hope to defeat the Lamaru, but she couldn’t hope to beat their ghost-mauling psychopomps, psychopomps behaving in ways she’d never seen, who felt like nothing she’d ever felt, whose purpose was the utter destruction of everything the Church was built on. The Elders and Church employees were gathered around the firedish she’d started, chanting, sending waves of almost unbearable power rolling over her, making every step she took a struggle, yet it barely seemed to have an effect on the murderous psychopomps. Ghost parts littered the ground; every step was like dipping her feet into icy water. Her eyes filled with tears. Now that she had a second to stop, she was exhausted; all the energy she’d exerted already, all she needed just to keep moving, was too much even for the speed she’d taken.

She stumbled over her own feet. Her stomach roiled, nausea overwhelming her. The fight went on around her and she pressed herself against the dirt wall, wanting to stay out of it. Or rather, not wanting to, but feeling she should. She’d been kidding herself that she could change things down there. Nothing she could do. She’d failed, she was a failure, and she’d—

Lauren.

What made her look she didn’t know, but she did, and caught sight of Lauren—of herself—at the periphery of the fighting crowd. If anything could galvanize her, that was it, that bitch. There Chess was blaming herself, and it was Lauren’s fault, Lauren’s plan, Lauren’s doing. And not only had she done it, she’d done it disguised as Chess.

Rage cranked her heartbeat back to a rapid pump and she took off past the ghosts and psychopomps, pushing bodies out of the way. Fuck them. At that moment she didn’t give a shit what happened to anyone, anywhere, as long as she got to settle her hands around Lauren’s miserable fucking throat and squeeze until she didn’t have any strength left.

Lauren turned; their eyes met. Chess almost fell. Staring at herself, at this perfect doppelganger—a shiver of pure terror jerked through her body. Doppelgangers were harbingers of death. Bad luck. Every magical instinct she had, honed by six years of Church training and three as an employee, told her to turn the fuck around and get away as fast as she could, that to look at her doppelganger was to curse herself, that some things couldn’t be unseen and that was one of them, forever hanging over her like the guillotine’s blade.

But only for a second. That wasn’t her, it was Lauren, and if one of them was going to die it sure as fuck wouldn’t be Chess—at least not if she could help it. Her feet found their way again. She dashed around the mass of fighting men, glimpsed Lex a few feet away, kept going.

Lauren hunched down, spreading her hands, ready. At the last second Chess dodged to the side, pivoted around her, grabbed her hair and yanked it back as hard as she could.

Her left eye exploded as Lauren’s fist shot straight up, stunning her. Her grip loosened, but just for a second. She still had that hair and she wasn’t letting go. Lauren fell on her back onto the ground, and Chess, gripping her hair, spun around and yanked her knife from her pocket with her free hand.

The point pressed into Lauren’s neck, her own eyes stared back at her. “Tell me how to stop them.”

Lauren said nothing. Her eyes cut away from Chess, widened slightly; thus Chess turned her face directly into the fist.

She tumbled off Lauren, her entire body limp, her brain short-circuiting. Lights flashed in her head, she couldn’t think, dimly felt someone grab her by the throat and squeeze.

Her arms refused to move. Nothing would move, she could still feel her body but it refused to obey her commands. It took her a second to realize she was held down, that Lauren sat on her chest with a twisted smile that rendered her face—Chess’s own face—unfamiliar as she choked her. Ugly power traveled down Chess’s arms, a familiar power, something slithering and glutinous beneath Lauren’s energy: the glamour she was using.

Panic replaced the air in her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Struggled harder, to no avail. This couldn’t be it, she refused to let this be it, suffocated on the floor in the City.

Limp. She forced herself to go limp, fighting every instinct she had. Lauren would relax, wait for it, she’d think Chess was dead and oh, fuck her lungs were about to explode and the need to move, to breathe, to fight hammered inside her like the worst withdrawals ever and her heart screamed and ached because she was about to die and there was something she hadn’t done, something she hadn’t ever done in her life, and she should have and she needed to and it was too late.

Lauren flew off her. Air rushed into Chess’s lungs, she couldn’t get enough, great gasping lungfuls of it flavored with herb smoke and blood and so fucking sweet she wanted to bottle it. For a moment she lay there gasping the dizziness from her head, until her vision cleared and she saw Lauren scrambling away from Terrible’s heavy footsteps. How had he known it was her?

Lex’s gore-spattered blue robe clung wetly to him; he looked like a ceremonial butcher at Festival time. Blood dripped off his hands as he quickly dispatched the Lamaru who’d helped Lauren hold Chess down. No time to thank him; she reached out, brushed his sleeve, turned away after Terrible. Her makeshift apron banged her knees; of course. She had that. Lauren didn’t.

Terrible had caught Lauren; she was trapped beneath him, both her arms twisted behind her back and clasped in his fist. Her face was twisted in pain; shit, was that what Chess actually looked like? She’d never thought her nose was so pointy; it didn’t seem so pointy in the mirror, but—She shook her head. This was not the time to get distracted.

Terrible wasn’t distracted; his head moved constantly, checking everyone out, looking to see if any other Lamaru were around.

Chess settled her hand on his sweaty shoulder for a second, said his name. Were his eyes a little too bright?

No time to worry about it. She reached for Lauren’s neck instead, aiming for the thin silver chain digging into Lauren’s skin, certain she knew what it was.

She wasn’t disappointed. Lauren struggled but Terrible held her fast so Chess could haul up the fetish, the talisman Lauren had used, the ugly stuffed toad-body full of filth.

The second the thing left her skin, Lauren’s glamour disappeared, but what was left behind was a woman Chess had never seen before. Not Lauren Abrams, at least not the Lauren Abrams Chess thought she knew.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Lauren—the woman—whoever the hell she was—didn’t reply. Terrible tugged her up from the ground by the arms; the woman’s face went pale.

She had dark hair cut like Chess’s, with the same heavy bangs and black dye; Chess assumed it was to assist the glamour. But the eyes meeting hers were blue, not hazel; the features heavier, the lips thicker. An unfamiliar face, but Chess had seen it before. It was the face she’d seen at Maguinness’s place when Lauren touched the fetish. The face she’d seen in the executioner’s kitchen, too.

Would this endless mind-fuck ever end? Only one way to find out, she guessed. She pulled her arm back and punched Lauren with all her strength, the crunching pain in her already aching knuckles making her entire body hum with satisfaction.

Blood flew from Lauren’s mouth. Almost instantly ghosts appeared, swiping at it, trying to grab it and absorb energy from it. Chess’s body turned from warm to icy and back again as parts of them passed through her. She’d long since stopped noticing the burning rush of her tattoos. Her entire focus at that moment was on watching Lauren and on trying to keep her body from flying apart under the heavy magic in the air, on keeping the fetish from touching her skin.

“Tell me what to say. Tell me how to call them off.”

No reply.

“Tell me how to do it. Look! Look at them! You’re losing, you’ve lost. Tell me how to stop it now and we won’t kill you.”

“You—you wouldn’t kill me.”

Chess smiled. Let Lauren see that smile, let her see how truly unpleasant it was. “I might not, but he will.”

Right on cue Terrible nestled his bloody knife against Lauren’s throat. She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Chess drew her fist back—

“Reklatia halkebirto,” Lauren spat. Power blasted from her with the words. Behind Chess, the dogs began to howl.

The sound stirred the ghosts up further, if that were possible. They darted and spun, their mouths opening wider and wider, their movements frantic.

One of them grabbed the fetish. Chess yanked it back, but not fast enough. The fetish, loaded with power, fed the ghost. Translucent glowing arms became solid, glowed brighter. The ghost’s face twisted into a leer, its hand raised, ready to strike. She pulled her own hand back, her vision narrowing until all she saw was the ghost’s fist, calculating when the blow would come and how she could deflect it—

A flash of movement to her left as Terrible knocked Lauren out. He grabbed the fetish before Chess could stop him.

His entire body stiffened. His already too-pale skin went even whiter, as though he were a ghost himself. Chess remembered how it had felt to touch the fetish, the twisting horrible sickness of it—and she’d been prepared for it, had felt its like before and knew how to handle and fight it. What he might be feeling, what might be happening to him, especially with that sigil carved into his chest, making him more vulnerable, she had no idea. She reached for him with her arms and her power, trying to find what was happening to him and absorb it somehow.

He crumpled. Just fell in a heap at her feet. She screamed and dropped to her knees, stuffing the fetish into her makeshift apron. She’d destroy it in a minute.

In a minute—fuck, so much to do. Speak Lauren’s incantation, check on the dogs and the ghosts, on the fight. It felt like they’d been there forever. A lifetime beneath the earth. They would never escape.

Her watch told her it had been barely fifteen minutes when she glanced at it as she tried—unsuccessfully—to pull him into her lap.

Terrible’s head lifted. His dazed eyes found her, stared at her for a second, as if he’d never seen her before in his life, while her heart jerked then flooded with relief when recognition replaced confusion. He glanced away, checked that Lauren was still out, then pulled away from her to get up.

But she hadn’t forgotten her resolution in those dark seconds when she thought her life had ended. And whether this was the right time or not, it was the only time she had; she needed to get back to the Church employees and tell them the incantation, to chase the dogs away, to soothe the ghosts.

Hours of work ahead, if she even survived to do it. Some Lamaru still fought, screams and howls still filled the air, ghosts swirled around them in blazing streaks of pale light. She put her hands on his shoulders and locked his dark eyes with hers, thinking she would very probably throw up in another minute, but if she died without ever having done it she’d never forgive herself:

“Terrible. I love you.”

He blinked. She couldn’t read his eyes, had no idea what he was thinking. Equivocations sat on the tip of her tongue, bottlenecked in her throat in their eagerness to fly out and pretend she hadn’t said it, hadn’t meant it, shit, she felt so stupid—

The City doors exploded in a ball of blue fire and iron.

Baldarel had arrived.