Unholy Ghosts

Chapter Thirty-five

A crowd waited for them in the muddy parking lot. Bump in full regalia, complete with ragged cape. Some of his men, smoking cigarettes, standing tough in little groups like mine clusters. They all turned, hands automatically dropping to knife holsters at their waists when the headlights hit them, then relaxing again when they recognized the car.

“Ay, lookie be my ladybird.” Bump oozed toward the car as Chess got out, his shiny boots gleaming. “Ready do your witchy thing?”

She nodded, figuring if she pretended she was ready she eventually would be. Probably when it was all over.

“Benefit. Slipknot set up on yon fuckin field, yay? Terrible chatter me what you needing, on the earlier. All ready your fuckin thing, get done, we straight.”

“Right.” She guessed Terrible had called when she was in the Church; she hadn’t even thought to ask him if he’d arranged to have everything set up for her. Everything except what was in her bag, and in the trunk of his car. All of her equipment.

“So why the stand here? We fuckin move, yay?”

Again, she nodded. Her throat felt too constricted to push words through.

The walk through the fence, across the scattered chunks of runway, felt like a funeral pro cession. Which in a way she guessed it was. Slipknot, at least, would be set free—or at least, sent into a more comfortable prison. The rest of them…

Her phone buzzed at her hip. Lex again. He’d called a dozen times, left messages she hadn’t bothered to listen to. The men were walking ahead of her, their backs swaying gently as they picked their way through the rubble. She answered the phone.

“Tulip! Damn, thought maybe you was dead. Why you didn’t wait for me before?”

“I told you why. I couldn’t hear you very well, and—”

“Aye, check it. Need to talk to you, like now. Come meet me.”

“I can’t, I’m—”

“I know where you at, and I know what you up to. Gotta get some words in first. I’m at the far end of the runway, dig? Over the fence. By them houses. Get over here, we gotta get straight ere you do all you might think again on later.”

“I can’t,” she repeated. Terrible glanced back at her, and she lowered her voice. “This isn’t about—it’s not about what we talked about.”

“This about that thief, aye? Gotta talk to you, tulip. Don’t care how you fix it. You get here. I got some knowledge you need right.”

“Why can’t you just tell—” she started, but he’d already hung up. Shit.

Ahead of her, off to the left in the center of the field, Slipknot’s corpse made a pale splotch on a platform fashioned from rough wooden crates. Best to have him off the ground, make sure nothing interfered…They were almost there.

“I have to go to the bathroom.” It wasn’t a great excuse, but it was the only one she could think of that would be irrefutably believed and would give her some privacy. Being caught here with Lex would not be healthy at all.

“Ain’t it wait?” Bump looked her up and down, as if trying to assess how badly she needed to go. And of course, she realized she kind of did need to go, which worked out wonderfully. Now she’d have to talk to Lex and not go, which meant she would still have to when she got back, unless she wanted to take the time to both talk to Lex and go, in which case they would wonder just what exactly she was doing.

“No. It can’t wait.”

He nodded. “Terrible, go with she ladybird, keep your eyes on right.”

Terrible shook his head. “Give her some private, Bump. C’mon. She ain’t gonna run, not with that thing after her, aye?”

Guilt worked its way into her bones, so deep it almost hurt. “I’ll be right back.”

“I gots men all over that fuckin edge, yay? Tell they I say let you be.”

She nodded and headed for the far edge, trying to move quickly enough that it looked like she needed to get there but not so quickly that it looked as if she was about to wet her pants. Her face burned.

Pitted metal cut into her hands, especially her wounded right one. An added bonus, rust working into her burn. She grabbed her water bottle when she got over the fence and poured some onto her palm, but it was too dark to know if it really helped. Nothing to do but forget it and get on with the job.

For a minute she stood, looking uncertainly around, aware that in removing herself from the sight of Terrible and Bump she’d also made herself vulnerable. If Lex’s plan to keep the airport from reopening included kidnapping her—again—she’d just handed herself to him on a shiny tray of deceit.

No sound but the dry wind hit her ears. The houses were dark, abandoned-looking in the pale washed-out glow of the moon. Their inhabitants were probably asleep. A trickle of sweat ran down her spine. They were asleep, all of them. She could almost feel them sleeping, turning fitfully in their rumpled, damp beds, their dreams being converted to energy for the thing she was about to fight. Alone.

Lex grabbed her hand. She jumped and swung automatically, but he ducked. His soft laugh caressed her skin. “Jumpy, tulip?”

“What do you want, Lex? This isn’t really a good time.”

“Oh?” His hands settled on her waist, fingers curving to draw her close. In spite of herself she shivered, closing her eyes at the feel of his teeth scraping the base of her throat. “Feels like a good time to me.”

With effort she pulled away. “No, it’s not. I had to tell them I needed to go to the bathroom, they’ll be waiting for me. So talk fast.”

“Aye, right. You ain’t forget our agreement, I hope.”

“No, I didn’t forget. This isn’t about the ghosts. It’s about the thief, and he could show up again any minute, so—”

“Bump gonna be expecting you finish the job. What you gonna tell him, he ask?”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“Maybe I do. A little.”

“You said you had some information for me.”

He watched her for a minute, his expression blank. “Aye, got some right. Been doing some looking on my own, tulip. Keeping my ear down, aye? Had people here today, my people, seen them Lamarus. And they know, dig? What’s on the happening.”

“They’ve known all along, those guys who broke in and—”

“Nay, nay. Ain’t what I mean. They know you, where you live, aye. But they know what’s going down here. They know you charging it off tonight. Gonna be some shit here, so get it done, get out clean. Head for the tunnel, I catch you there.”

“Why?”

“Huh?”

“Why? What if I do end up Banishing those ghosts tonight, what then? Will you still be waiting for me, or what? What are you going to do to me?”

Even in the dim moonlight she could see his smile. “Aw, tulip. Seems to me you oughta know by now what I do. Thought you got pretty familiar with it.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Only willpower kept her voice from getting shaky.

He kissed her, still holding her hips close enough that she had to lean back. Her already shaky nerves went into overload, speed and adrenaline and lust combining to make her knees weak, and she clung to him in a way that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been so desperate to pretend none of this was happening.

“I got belief in you,” he said finally. “You ain’t stupid. You figure something out.”

“That’s a big help.”

“You forgetting, I ain’t a helpful guy.”

She snorted and turned back toward the fence. In another minute they would send someone to look for her, if they hadn’t already. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Okay.” She dropped her bag on the ground next to Slipknot’s foul remains and planted her hands on her hips. Her head grew lighter, but she forced herself to ignore it. She could not mess this up. It was her life on the line now, in more ways than one. “It’s extremely important that no one goes to sleep. What we’re dealing with…he feeds on sleep, or he can. He can make you tired. So whatever you need to do to stay awake, do it.”

They nodded, good little soldiers one and all, with the exception of Bump and Terrible. Bump stood apart from it all, the diamonds on his fingers throwing off moonlight sparks. And Terrible…He just watched, waiting, the tension in his body evident.

“Also, I think the people who did this to start with may be here tonight. Might show up, I mean. Nothing can break my circle. If that circle breaks once I’ve gotten started we’ve got a problem, and I mean a real problem. So you guys have to keep everyone away from it, okay? Come over here, please, I want to mark you all first. It might help.”

It only took a few minutes to finish scrawling sigils on their foreheads with the new piece of black chalk she’d bought that afternoon. When she was done they looked like members of a bizarre chorus line. She half expected them to start dancing.

“Spread you out, keep watch,” Bump said. “Let ladybird do she fuckin work. You sleep, you die, yay? No fuckin sleeping.”

Grass rustled under their feet as they moved, but Chess didn’t watch. Feeling like a floor show, she checked her compass, knelt and set up her stang holder, put her other odds and ends at its base while she marked off a septagram with her feet and placed a candle at each point. The septagram would provide extra energy, extra protection; she’d only used one once before, but it was part of the established Church curriculum. A few Debunkers used them every time.

Wind lifted her hair from her shoulders as she finished and looked around, half expecting to see Ereshdiran’s pink teeth bared at her. Instead she saw only blank ground, only the backs of Bump’s men as they kept watch like they’d been told.

And Terrible. She threw him a quick smile, and he nodded back. Working now, no time for such frivolities as being pleasant. Or he was simply nervous. Having faced the Dreamthief, having seen Randy’s body and felt the house shake, he knew far better than the others what they were up against. And that didn’t even take into account the unknown number of Lamaru who might show up at any moment, ready for battle.

Not her concern. At least not if she was lucky. Only a dozen or so men stood between her and whoever might show up, but they were certainly tough enough.

With the chalk she drew more sigils on her forehead and cheeks, coloring the final lines on some of her tattoos to activate them. She’d never marked up this much before.

Her new skull came out next, then the cauldron and charcoal, which she lit with a wooden match. It would burn, then smoke out so she could add the herbs.

A few more minutes and she was ready, the herbs and various other accoutrements lined up in their pouches next to the cauldron, the amulet in her pocket ready to be pulled out when needed. If not for the extra candles and the iron firedish, it would have looked almost like she was setting up a regular ritual. Thank the Church for training her so thoroughly, and thank magic itself for having rules. Once you knew the rules thoroughly enough you could manipulate them and get whatever results you needed.

One more step. She washed a couple of Cepts down with water and, bending over deep in a semi fruitful attempt to block the wind, did two more bumps.

“Terrible? Could you come here?”

He did, silent across the grass. She handed him the speed. “You might want more of this. Just to be safe.”

“He ain’t shown up yet. Think he off putting people to sleep?”

“Yeah, I think maybe he is.”

His eyes flickered over her little altar setup. “Everything ready?”

“Looks like it. I’m going to cast the circle now, light the candles, and then hopefully we’ll get this over with.”

“Not hopeful, aye? It will get over.”

She bit her lip. “If…if something goes wrong and I don’t make it, you need to go to Doyle. He might be an egotistical shitbag as a human being but he’s good at his job. He knows some other guys who’ve seen the thief, maybe they can get the Church to act, but either way they’ll finish it. Only do me a favor. Don’t—don’t tell him how I got involved. About Bump, I mean.”

He didn’t try to talk her out of her fears, or discount them. Just gave her his eyes, nodded. “He don’t need to have knowledge about you. Ain’t his business.”

“And my apartment. There’s…there’s some stuff there, the Church would take possession of everything.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

“Listen, Chess.” He shifted on his feet, shoved his hands in his pockets. “I been thinking—”

Shouts from the far corner cut him off, Bump’s men. Chess leapt to her feet, craning her neck to see as Terrible spun away from her to take back his place. Guarding her, the last line of defense. If he…if he fell, so would she.

The Lamaru had arrived. Time to get started.