Unholy Ghosts

Chapter Thirty-six

Salt poured through her shaking fingers, creating as heavy a line as she could to mark the edge of the circle. She didn’t always do a full cast, but this spell required it absolutely. No chances could be taken.

Power crawled from the ground under her feet, oozing over her skin. Her tattoos heated. Her hair stood on end. The ultimate rush, the ultimate high, more power than she’d ever felt before. Certainly more than she’d ever raised on her own, so much she didn’t know if she could contain it. Fear joined the party, tingling up from her stomach to pool in her chest. She felt her lips stretch into a shaky grin as she whispered the words she needed, calling the escorts of the dead.

When she’d finished the circle was visible, a deep glowing blue, shimmering in the air so bright her eyes ached.

The wind died. Good. The wall of light was working.

She walked the septagram again, lighting each candle in turn with a fresh match, dropping the used sticks into the firedish. Each candle got another word, another physical expression of energy expended with each spoken syllable. Eratosh, Astagosh, Bidamosh. Ligorosh, Hapmalosh, Kolabosh, and Septazosh. On Septazosh the flames blazed, shooting sparks up to disappear into the glowing roof of the circle.

Shouts and the sound of flesh against flesh filtered through the circle, but far away. They weren’t close yet, but that could change any second. She moved faster, forcing herself to use the fear, to give herself to it. A second of decision, a relaxing of the boundaries of her mind, and she slipped through.

Her heart still raced, but it was pure high now, clean and sparkling. She wasn’t Cesaria anymore. She was power. She was the gate.

Slipknot’s cold, squashy fingers didn’t want to close around the lump of silver she placed in his palm, covering the now-unreadable runes carved there. No surprise, nor was the muffled thud of his squashed-looking heart. She felt it, too, that extra power. The connection to the Dreamthief, tugging at her, refusing to let her forget even for a moment that he was there.

She pulled a length of twine from her bag and looped it around his fist, tying it securely but gently. With the black chalk she drew the passport she’d designed for him directly onto one of the few usable spots on his arm.

Into the smoking cauldron went asafetida, pungent and slightly greasy in the still air. Then ajenjible, and finally a handful of the corrideira Edsel ground for her earlier.

Smoke plumed in the air, twisting and curling, forming shapes she couldn’t identify but saw with eyes in her soul, whispering words she felt but did not hear. The skull shifted, as though the ground beneath it had trembled, but did not move.

“I call on the escorts of the City of the Dead,” she murmured, slipping her ritual knife from its case. “To set this man Slipknot free from his mortal remains. To take him to his rest. To sever him from his worldly prison and the power keeping him here.”

The skull moved again, but did not rise. The shouts outside the circle grew louder.

Chess held her left hand low over the top of the skull. “I offer an appeasement to the escorts for their aid.”

With the sharp tip she sliced the skin of her left pinky finger, a quick, deep cut. Blood dripped from the wound, purple-black in the bluish light. It spattered on top of the skull, tiny droplets sparkling as it flew into the air.

Something thumped to her left. Inside the circle. Slipknot’s heart sped up as energy filled his soul. Her own kicked up in reply. On top of all the speed, she felt like she had a freight train in her chest, barely contained by bone and muscle. Chess twisted back to the cauldron and dripped blood into it, then added a hair plucked from Slipknot’s head.

“Escorts, I call you!”

The last ingredient went into the cauldron, powdered crow skull. The smoke turned black, exploded from the wide iron mouth, and rolled to the roof of the circle, blocking the pure deep blue.

Smoke entered her lungs, insinuating itself into her body through her nose and mouth, curling around her arms. Her tattoos tingled and ached as if they were being recut into her skin.

Through the dark haze she saw the skull lift, move. More bones appeared, sketched out behind, built by and black from the thick, acrid smoke.

The shouts outside got closer, louder, as muscle and sinew grew on the bones, weaved itself together. Coarse black hair poured itself over the raw flesh. The dog’s eyes burned purple-green, iridescent, feeding on the same power that ran through Chess like a bolt of lightning. A long, low growl left its throat and crawled up her spine. Psychopomps shouldn’t growl like that.

With shaking hands she sprinkled the remaining powdered crow bone over the ruined body on the pallet. Energy blew back at her, dark and feverish, invading her body. Her voice creaked like a rusty hinge. “Set this man free, cadeskia regontu balaktor!”

Slipknot’s heart beat faster, louder, pounding arrythmically in her ears. Her own heart tried to syncopate but couldn’t, her chest ached. This was too much, too much, she couldn’t handle it…

Thin, high screams filled the air and she realized they were hers, hers and Slipknot’s as his soul escaped from the wreckage that used to house it and saw what it had become. He screamed, black eyes wide in his pale face, his mouth a gaping dark tear, screamed in terror and freedom and the horror he’d experienced.

She spilled water down her front as she forced some into her mouth, chasing away the awful smoke-and-speed drymouth.

“Slipknot, go! I call on the escort to take you to the City, I order you to go!”

The dog leapt. Slipknot’s screams turned shrill, so high-pitched she could barely hear them. This was wrong, she was losing it, too much energy circled around and her body couldn’t control it all, she was falling, she could feel him pulling her, sucking her with him through their connection…

Her right hand hit the edge of the firedish. Pain roared up her arm, bringing her back. She focused everything she could on cutting the invisible cord binding them, renouncing him.

It gave, with a sharp pang like a rubber glove snapping back into place. Her eyes filled with tears and dragged back into focus just in time to see the ragged hole, to see Slipknot reaching for her, trying to go back to the world he knew, as the dog gripped his arm in its heavy jaws and dragged him down into the emptiness of silent death.

Her vision flipped to black for a moment, the blackness of sleep. Not her sleep; the sleep of the thief, the sleep of those whose power he was using. Without Slipknot there to filter it, the full weight of the blood connection fell to her. Oh, fuck…

Flashes of dreams, images of people in their beds, hundreds of them, uneasy on rumpled damp bedsheets, curled into balls on hard streets. She struggled to get it under control, to return to herself. Her hands twisted on each other, her muscles shook. Finally she pressed her left thumb into the palm of her right hand, sending screaming pain up her arm from the wound.

It worked. Her sight returned. She slammed back into herself, into the circle, and realized with both Slipknot and the dog gone, some of the power lessened, enough for her to take a breath. The cauldron burned her uninjured left hand as she lifted it, tipping its contents into the firedish and adding a handful of dried melidia.

Directly in front of her the blue wall wavered. They were close, so close, their shouts drowning out her thoughts. Her entire body shook. This was the dangerous part, and if she didn’t do it perfectly, didn’t end it now, the circle would be breached and she would lose. Lose and be lost.

The match head scraped across the rim of the firedish. “Ereshdiran,” she whispered, speaking his name for the first time. Just saying it hurt her tongue. “Ereshdiran kalepta barima.”

Someone shouted her name. Terrible. Terrible shouted her name. She opened her mouth to answer but her voice died in her throat. The thief appeared, his cloak moving in a breeze she could not feel, the hood thrown back to reveal shiny, pale skin stretched tight over the bones of his skull.

Something pulsed beneath that skin. Moving veins, veins that were not veins at all. They were worms, maggots like the ones in her hand. A low moan escaped her throat. He was going to eat her. He would drag her into the infested hell from whence he came and she would stay there, screaming while they overran her. While they ate her again and again, crawling under her skin too or burrowing through it, holes in her skin, holes in her brain…

She couldn’t stop staring at them, at his glittering hypnotic eyes and those teeth glowing in the dark blue-black air. Couldn’t stop seeing her own face reflected in them, miniature images of herself alone against a backdrop of nothing at all.

Hands appeared, long, curving fingers with bloodstained nails. They reached for her. She wanted to move but couldn’t, couldn’t even breathe. Even stuffed with adrenaline and speed as she was, her eyelids fluttered, her thoughts softened. Somewhere inside she knew what was happening, screamed and beat against her own flesh, but she could not will her body to obey.

Terrible shouted her name again, breaking the spell. She dropped the match. The melidia caught, sending a wall of flame into the air, separating Chess from the cruel infernal promise of those solid shark eyes.

She grabbed the amulet, ignoring the jolt of electric pain. Ignoring, too, the certainty that her cauterized wound would burst open again and worms would swarm. Flames seared her skin as she held the amulet over the firedish and summoned as much of the power circling through her as she could.

“Ereshdiran I command you to return. Return to your place of silence, return to your place of hiding, return to the place where you hold no power. I command this by fire, I command it by smoke. Return!”

She dropped the amulet into the flames.

A body flew into the circle, knocking her over. The blue wall disappeared. The circle had broken.

Her ears rang as the shouts and sounds of fighting, which had been muffled by the circle, slammed into them. Bodies ducked and danced around her, chaos destroying her stang and her careful arrangement. One of the fighting men stepped on her leg. She jerked it away, ignoring the pain, her eyes focused hard on what had been her altar.

The firedish fell over. The amulet spilled out, barely melted by the inferno that should have destroyed it.

Some instinct told her to yank her sleeve over her hand before she grabbed it. It wouldn’t lessen the heat much but it would hopefully keep the amulet’s design from imprinting her skin, possibly binding Ereshdiran to her forever instead of just until the amulet was destroyed.

Cold grass prickled her skin as she rolled away from the brawling bodies in what had been a ritual space. The Dreamthief followed. She caught a glimpse of him, pressing one talonlike finger against the head of a fighter, knocking him into sleep. A knife fell from the fighter’s hand—he was one of the Lamaru, not Bump’s—and Ereshdiran picked it up, flipping it expertly in his hand and stalking toward her.

She had the amulet. She had it, and he was bound to her, which meant supposedly she could control him, but she knew it wouldn’t work. Just to be certain, she tried it, shouting the Banishing words with every bit of breath and power she had. He didn’t so much as flicker.

Her feet pounded the ground as she turned left, making a wide circle around the brawling bodies. Blood flew through the air, weapons caught the moon like strobe lights. The air was heavy with sweat and blood and hot pain, thick with energy unlike anything she’d ever felt. Above her several birds flew in formation, avian psychopomps collecting souls. Death stalked the runways, death hovered overhead, and Ereshdiran did not halt his steady advance.

He was playing with her, waiting for her to tire out, taking whatever power he needed from the men nearby. Not as many of them as it had looked originally, but none of the men seemed ready to admit defeat. Bump’s men were powered by speed and loyalty, and the Lamaru, she had no idea but she guessed it was rage and greed and any number of illicit magics.

The thief turned, heading in her direction, and she saw her opening. She ducked down, narrowly avoiding being clipped in the head by a fist, and ran as hard as she could back to the remains of her altar. She had some melidia left, some crow’s bone and corrideira. They might give her enough strength to Banish him for a few minutes, long enough for her to set the fire back up, cast another circle.

She darted past another fighting couple and grabbed what she could. A heavy body fell on her. One of Bump’s men, out cold or dead. She didn’t know which. All she knew was the ground swooped up from its rightful place and hit her, the edge of the amulet sliced through her shirt to bite her skin deep, and the thief was closing in on her with a triumphant smile as her blood poured over his amulet again.