Unholy Ghosts

Chapter Thirty-seven

Her stomach burned, so hot it felt cold, as something in her gut shifted and moved. He was drawing from her, using her, strengthening their bond. She felt herself being sucked into the raging caverns of his black eyes, sucked in and thrown into the dreams of the city’s sleepers.

Voices raised behind her, as if the witches sensed what had happened. A chant, words of power, flying into the air and gathering strength. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs refused to expand, her limbs did not want to move. She tried to crawl forward but fell, unable even to support herself.

Below her in the earth, power still lurked. She’d felt it earlier when she cast the circle, she knew it was there. Her tired mind rebelled, against what she didn’t even know anymore and wasn’t sure it mattered. This was it, she’d lost. She was bound to him, connected, and he would drain her dry like a fucking battery and turn his attentions to someone else, to everyone else. And her soul, that worthless little thing, would be trapped here in her wasting body. Not in the City but without any of the reasons to stay out of the City. No pills. No smoke. No nothing that made life worth living. Just a soul, stuck perhaps at the bottom of that well forever. Stuck here at the airport.

In her left hand she clasped the ingredients she’d grabbed. Blood still trickled from her pinky and dripped to the dirt. Her blood, feeding the earth. Her blood, feeding the Dreamthief. The earth…haunted…the City beneath it and the Lamaru’s plan to set the spirits free…

“Chess! Chess!” Terrible’s roar, audible over the interrupted chants. At least someone was looking for her, someone noticed. What had he said they called them, the pilots? Flying aces? At least she’d done something right, at least she’d learned what was really haunting the airport…flying aces. Dozens of them. Here. Aces in the hole. Aces up the sleeve. She could certainly use one of those.

Aces who still haunted here, above the ground. Aces who hadn’t gone below to the City. The words kept circling in her head, like they should mean something, like she was trying to tell herself something but couldn’t get through the thick, black static of the thief’s connection.

She forced herself to relax and rest her forehead on the ground. The City. The murderous ghosts, the Lamaru controlling ghosts…controlling what they summoned…

The smell of dirt, dirt and smoke and green things, filled her nose, cleared her head just enough for her to open up, to focus on her pinky and her blood as it poured into the earth.

Her swirling thoughts snapped into place. The airport was haunted. Real ghosts. Real ghosts who’d been here for just over a hundred years, who’d been created when the place burned, when…sleep deprivation caused madness. Madmen who died sometimes splintered apart, became something else, twisted and merged and formed new entities.

Like Dreamthieves.

If this was where he’d come from, if he was made from discarded parts of the airport’s ghosts, they would seek to reabsorb him. They would overpower him, dissolve him.

If she was right. If she wasn’t…if she wasn’t she’d just better hope she was strong enough, because an entire battalion of ghosts would take them all out, every living person on the field, in about two minutes.

Fuck it. She didn’t have a choice, did she? Story of her life. Either the thief and Lamaru would kill them all or the ghosts would, but at least with the ghosts she had a chance. She forced energy into her blood, into the earth, and opened herself to it as wide as she could, waiting for it to leap back into her, to flood her senses. Waiting for it the way she waited for her pills to dissolve, every muscle in her body tense and expectant—but this would be more than her pills, more than any drug. The ultimate rush. The Summoning words hesitated on her tongue, ready to leap from her mouth into the air the second the power hit her.

Nothing happened. She could feel the thief advancing, knew he would be on top of her any second. This had to work, had to work, she had no idea how she would fix it later or what it might mean to Bump or Lex if she did, but at least she might be alive to do so, relax…

Energy surged up from the ground, into her finger, through her. Earth power, solid power. The kind spirits could not draw on, not like humans could. It was their prison, they could not pass through it and they could not use it.

She flipped over. The thief was there, only a few feet away. Not much time at all. Her fingers closed around a match, scraped it on her jeans, touched it to the herbs spilling from her hand.

“Kadira tam! Kadira tam! You are compelled! With blood I summon you and with blood I compel you!” Wind tore the last words from her throat. Nothing happened.

Shit. She’d never done it before, was breaking half a dozen Church laws by even attempting to do it now.

The Dreamthief stood directly above her, knife at the ready. She raised her leg, trying to kick him away, but it passed through him. Only the knife and the hand holding it were solid. Good.

She lay back, as though too weak and afraid to do anything else, and waited for him to lunge. The opening would come, be ready…

He moved, dropping down, and she shoved herself up as hard as she could. His blade sliced her arm but she barely noticed, too distracted by the freezing pain of passing directly through him.

She didn’t bother to break her fall as she came out behind him, but let herself land on her chest with a thud. The rest of the melidia was still there on the ground, it might be enough.

Over the now-quieting shouts of the fighting men came another sound, a low, heavy buzz like a drill. She ignored it. She’d failed, but she was still alive, and she would not go down without a fight. If he was connected to her she could unconnect him.

The melidia was there. The black chalk was gone, but she had her knife. Not the best option but an option.

The buzzing drone grew louder, drowning out everything else. Chess grabbed her knife and brought the point to her left arm, gritting her teeth against the pain, glancing up to watch the Dreamthief pick himself up off the ground.

Hands on her, barely closing around her shoulders before an ugly crack rent the air. The witch’s body crumpled to the ground, his head twisted sideways. Terrible’s feet by her leg. He’d broken the man’s neck.

She slid the knife along her arm. Up, over, down…a Bind rune, a protective rune, a rune of purity, slashed into her flesh. Agony grabbed hold of her with sharp teeth and made her vision waver as the runes warred with the thief’s evil tinge in her blood.

Wind swept over her skin, whipped her hair around her face. She grabbed the melidia and leapt to her feet, stumbling over bodies as the thief lunged for her again. His knife drove into the spot where she was only seconds before.

That was when she realized no one was fighting. They’d stopped. They’d stopped, and they were staring at the sky as planes droned and swooped overhead, so many it seemed the sky was made of them. They were looking up.

It had worked. The ghosts had come.

Ducking her head, she weaved through the men and dumped the last of the melidia out of the Baggie when she reached the edge of the crowd. It lit with a hiss. She squeezed the wound on her pinky, dripping blood on the pile, and dropped the amulet into it.

Flesh smacked against flesh behind her. Her head turned instinctively and she saw Terrible again, his teeth bared in pain and rage, his hands closed around the thief’s lone solid hand hovering above her head.

The thief disappeared.

White lights turned the runway into an alien landscape, colorless and bizarre, as the first plane dove in for a landing. Men scattered, resuming their fighting in twos and threes.

“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!”

Another plane, and another. Spectral men emerged, climbing from the open holes as the propellers slowed.

Ereshdiran reappeared, at her side. He’d lost the knife when he disappeared, but his teeth looked solid enough, as well as both of his hands.

Chess steeled herself and grabbed them, like dipping her hands into dry ice. She reached for the power in the ground, reached for the dead pilots, and drew them in.

She screamed. Her stomach twisted and lurched in her belly, her legs went weak. She just had to hold him until the amulet melted, just long enough…she drove power into the fire, heating it, forcing it to burn so bright she had to close her eyes.

He disappeared again, leaving her gripping nothing, with energy surging through her body like a speeding car.

The fire. She held her hands over it as close as she could bear, anticipating his next move.

She was wrong. A Lamaru leapt for it, his face twisted toward her so she could see the thief staring at her from his eyes. Possession; a clever move, but a bad one. He’d forgotten humans could be hurt, that they died.

Terrible’s knife flashed. Blood spattered over her hair and face. The witch fell, still scrabbling at his throat with clawed hands. The thief emerged from his body like the moon rising over the trees.

The witch’s blood hit her fire, building it with more of Ereshdiran’s own power. The thief wavered, trying to disappear. His ugly, bulging eyes shifted to the right, watching, as the ghosts advanced on him.

Another plane landed. Another, practically on top of one another, the precision in their movements as breathtaking as it was terrifying. Still the sky was full, still the amulet burned at her feet. It hissed and popped as the copper melted.

“I compel you!” Chess squeezed her finger, shook it and her arm. Blood flew from her wounds into the air, ran down her hand to the ground. She lifted it, pointed her dripping finger at Ereshdiran, and shoved as much energy as she could pull from the ground into her next words, so much her throat burned and her eyes watered. “I summoned you and you are compelled! By blood and power you will obey me! Ereshdiran tama longram!”

For one heart-stopping minute the ghosts didn’t move, and her stomach flew into her throat. If she’d been wrong about Ereshdiran’s origins, or if she’d brought them here but wasn’t able to control them, they were all dead. Had she used enough power?

Ghosts brushed past her, through her, stalking Ereshdiran. His mouth opened, a smudgy hole in his face as they crowded around him, closing in, closing ranks.

Terrible’s breath caught. Chess dragged her gaze away just long enough to see him, his head thrown back, for once ignoring everything around him. His fingers closed around hers. “Look,” he said quietly. “Look at them.”

The planes cut patterns through the air. They shot straight up into the sky then dove back down. And every minute it seemed more of them appeared, more and more, different planes, newer-looking ones, older ones.

Movements across the field. Bumps’ men, victorious, dragging bodies across the gritty landscape. Where was Bump? She hadn’t seen him since the ritual started. He’d probably gone back to his car, waited and watched, let the others do the work. What else could anyone expect?

Her legs weakened suddenly, like someone had smacked her in the backs of the knees. Before she could straighten she felt them, felt people waking in their beds all over the city with their hearts pounding, already forgetting the details of their nightmares but glad to be awake and alive.

The fire went out. Chess looked down and saw only a river of gleaming copper, already cooling into a twisted shape in the grass. She held her hand over it, opened up. Nothing. Clean. The copper was empty…and so was she. No more thief lurking inside. Nothing but her own self, and the overwhelming power of the earth and the ghosts. She closed her eyes, held on to it for a minute. Feeling good. Feeling alive, and actually glad to be so. Then, regretfully, letting it go. That power wasn’t hers. She released it, let it seep down through her body to ripple out from her feet.

A pale, shriveled hand thrust itself into the air between ghosts, Ereshdiran’s hand, closing into a desperate fist before shrinking back on itself and disappearing. Chess shivered, and suddenly she couldn’t stop shivering. Balancing on her own was impossible; she leaned against Terrible, clutching at his shirt, and realized he was shaking, too. The ground was shaking, rolling beneath their feet like it was trying to give birth.

Too late, she realized her mistake. She’d taken earth energy and combined it with her own, used it to call and power the ghosts; now she’d returned that ghost-tinged energy to the ground, and it was reacting to the unnatural mix. Violently.

As the world started to spin around her, as she half-ran, half let Terrible drag her toward the fence and the parking lot, she saw the planes were disappearing one by one from the sky, from the runways. It was like a meteor shower overhead, lights zooming through the darkness and popping off. She hadn’t Banished them, hadn’t had a chance…hadn’t needed to.

She stumbled. Her ankle screamed but she ignored it, her legs aching and her breath coming in gasps. Bump’s men caught up, passed them.

The dilapidated wooden building collapsed. Water surged from the well beside it, a geyser of sewage. Chess ran harder. They weren’t far now, the fence was just ahead—

Cracks formed in the mud, snaking in front of her, to the sides. Blackness oozed around the edges of her vision. She couldn’t keep up this pace. Rocks flew through the air, chunks of concrete, sharp bits of gravel that stung everywhere they hit.

The fence ripped, poles falling apart. The rusted links bounced and dissolved under her feet as they ran across it and got in the car. Terrible started the engine and threw it into reverse, slamming the gas, sending a shower of gravel out from under the big, broad tires. The last thing Chess saw as they drove away was an enormous slab of concrete from the runway, standing vertical, sinking like a wrecked ship back into the earth.