Unholy Ghosts

Chapter Four

It went on forever, the waiting to die, while her heart beat triple-time in her chest and Brain’s thin, high scream hit her ears, barely audible over the noise. It was coming, it was coming to smash into them all and destroy them in a quick flash of rocket fuel and smoke. She tried to scramble out of the way but there was no way to get out of. The lights didn’t dim or change direction, and she had somehow managed to fall against the only unbroken section of wall in the ramshackle place. She wrapped her arms around her head, knowing it wouldn’t make one damn bit of difference.

Wood exploded next to her, splinters catching her cheek and bare arms. She tried to duck away from it but something grabbed her arm, something hard and hot, ripping her through the wall.

Terrible. He dragged her through the hole he’d punched in the rotted wood and out of the building, to her feet, and as she stood she realized the noise had stopped. There were no lights. There was nothing but Brain’s panting sobs and the terrible rushing emptiness filling her ears.

Her body felt like rubber as she tried to stand but fell again. Terrible’s arm wrapped around her chest, just below her breasts, and pressed her to his side.

“Nothing here, Chess, nothing here.” She didn’t know how many times he said it before it finally sank in, before the queasy vibrating stopped in her legs and she could raise her head and look at him.

“Thought you was good with the spook stuff,” he said. “You look like some dead.”

“And you look like Elvis vomited you up,” she managed. “So?”

Hinges creaked in her ears again as he laughed. “So we both looking bad, guesses. But I do always, and you do never. You right now?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m right. Come on. Show me around outside here.”

“You little machine made the beeps, before the noise started.”

“It’s a Spectrometer. It measures disturbances in the metaphysical plane—ghosts exude metaenergy and leave trails of it behind.”

His jutting brow furrowed. “So—”

“Woo-hoo!” Brain’s cry split the darkness and made Chess jump back against Terrible. The Nips were making her too jumpy, with all the extra adrenaline. She needed to finish this up and take something to come down.

“I seen it! I seen a ghost! Wait’ll I say! They all listen now, they all lis—” The words turned into a queer gurgle when Terrible’s hand closed around his throat again.

“You say nothing, young one. You say to nobody, dig?”

Brain nodded.

Terrible let go. “Ain’t no haunts here. We find who’s pulling tricks, we kill them. You don’t spread no stories, or I come get you and make sure you don’t. Or worse.” He turned and gestured toward Chess. “You know she, right?”

“I never seen—”

“You seen her skin, young one, you know she is. You want her after you? She help me find you, but maybe I let her take care of your mouth.”

Chess took a step forward, wanting to say something, but nothing came out. This wasn’t her business, this was street business, Bump’s business, and interference would be unhealthy.

Besides, the last thing any of them needed was for her involvement in the affair to become common knowledge. The Church might look the other way about a lot of things, but using their equipment and her abilities to aid drug traffickers probably wouldn’t get her any commendations.

So she just watched while Brain nodded, his wide eyes gleaming white in the darkness, and Terrible dismissed him with a jerk of the head. The boy ran away in a tiny spray of gravel.

“Right,” Terrible said, turning back to her. “Let’s finish this up, go home.”

The rest of the airport consisted mostly of scrub grass and broken cement. They wandered the perimeter, the breeze cool on her fevered body, but she didn’t find anything. No transmitters, no interrupters, no projectors or even electromagnets. Nothing indicated the airport wasn’t genuinely haunted.

And her skin, her own powers, clearly indicated it was, even without the Spectrometer’s sudden violent awakening. But why had it hit her so hard and so suddenly, when the apparition was right on top of them? She should have felt something before that, shivers of warmth, goose-bumps, anything.

Unless that speed was doing more than “crazying her up.” Her Cepts didn’t really interfere with her abilities, at least not in normal doses, but she didn’t do speed very often, especially not while working.

It was odd that her Spectrometer hadn’t so much as beeped before redlining, but that was easier to explain. Someone could have sent a blast of magical energy to it at the same time as they switched on whatever powered the lights and transmitted the sound; there were lots of illegal gadgets that fucked with Spectrometers, which was why they were simply tools for detection used in addition to the Debunkers’s personal powers.

Hell, if the gadget and the sound-and-light set was portable enough and whoever ran it was fast enough, they could have ducked through the fence and been gone before Terrible pulled her out of the building.

Either way, one of the first things she’d learned in her training was never to assume anything, and to keep investigating until an undeniable conclusion had been reached. Which meant, damn it, this was going to take a lot longer than she’d originally thought.

She was still ruminating on it when they reached the far end of the field. The remains of the building were little more than a shadow when viewed from here, and the grass brushed against her thighs.

Terrible plodded along ahead of her. His tall broad frame parting the weeds sounded like death whispers in the still night, like a predator sliding over the plains.

She took another step, and stopped short. Power shot up her leg, curled over her skin. Something had happened here, a ritual…a sacrifice, even. Something that cooled her blood and made her wish desperately that she was back home in bed.

“What’s troubling, Chess? Why you so white?”

She shook her head. It was trying to talk to her, to tell her something…she just didn’t know what. She couldn’t hear it, it was trapped in the whispers, all the voices crowding together in her head.

Her skin crawled as dark energy skimmed over her tattoos. It took everything she had to step back, not to crouch down and listen, to put both feet inside the circle and let the darkness take her where it wanted to go.

“Somebody’s been doing magic here,” she whispered, then, feeling a little foolish, she said it again louder. “Forbidden magic.”

“Like raising ghosts?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

She took a step to the right, placing her foot carefully, trying to feel the edge of the circle as best as she could. She did not want to walk into it again. At least, most of her didn’t.

The breeze picked up, lifting her hair and cooling the back of her sweaty neck. It wasn’t old, the spell. A month, six weeks at the most, but probably more recent. She couldn’t imagine how much power there must have been here while it was being cast. The kind of power that required either a very experienced, very powerful sorcerer, or a very innocent victim. Or both.

Either way, it wasn’t anything she wanted to be around anymore.

Three more careful steps gave her a good idea of how wide the circle was. Nine feet, big enough for several people.

Terrible started toward her, but she put her hand out. “Don’t. You don’t want to chance stepping into it. You still got that flashlight?”

He stopped and held it out to her, waiting patiently like a faithful dog while she examined the ground as much as she could from outside the perimeter. The prior week’s rain, if not the general passage of time, had eliminated pretty much anything she’d have been able to see, but something glittered on the ground, very faintly, right near the center.

She adjusted the light, holding it high to try and get a better look. Small and gold, shiny as the edge of a razor blade and from what she could make out, almost as sharp. It nestled among several blades of grass, not revealing itself to her.

“Get me a stick or something.” If it was part of a spell, she could conceivably break it simply by removing the thing. If it wasn’t…she’d put it in the African Blackwood trunk where she kept any dodgy magical items she happened to come across. The energy of the wood was strong enough to block just about anything.

Terrible headed for the stand of trees just outside the fence. She watched him tear a new hole in the chain links and slip through it. Odd how such a big man managed to move so stealthily, but then in his line of work he’d need it. She wasn’t the only person who’d ever been surprised to find him standing right in front of her, just the only one for whom the experience ended without broken bones.

Meanwhile she kept the light focused on the piece of gold, afraid that if she looked away it would change into something else or disappear. Some people might think such a thing impossible, but she knew better. With magic almost anything was possible; all objects had energy, and energy could be manipulated.

Funny how much cleaner the air tasted out here, only fifteen miles or so from Downside but away from the constant fires, the crowds, and the slaughter house. Even with the faint garbage odor wafting under her nose whenever the wind changed, it felt more like country than city, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of the city on her free time. For that matter she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of her apartment on her free time, save to buy food or score. What was the point?

The chain links jingled. Terrible headed back through the hole in the fence, his body a shadow that didn’t appear to move but moved just the same.

Better tools existed to do the job, but the stick would have to work. Her body ached from trying to keep still and balanced as she leaned out over the circle, using the tip of the broken branch to ease the medallion closer.

It wasn’t working. Maybe if she put one foot in the circle, kept the other outside, she could get better leverage.

Probably not a good idea. Her heart, already beating rapid time from the speed, gave a sick little lurch at the idea. But she had to have that piece of metal. Had to. It wanted her to have it, and she wanted it.

She lifted her foot and planted it inside the circle, as far forward as she could.

Pain swallowed her leg, sinking in with teeth like thorns. She screamed and dropped to the ground, heedless of where she fell, tumbling headfirst into the remains of the circle.

Black. It was all black in there, and so cold, so cold her bones felt brittle, so cold she could barely remember what heat had felt like. Voices echoed around her like shouts down a wind tunnel, they were saying terrible things, they were laughing about death and horror and something in front of her had giant black eyes like hunks of obsidian set in its bony face and teeth dripping with reddish saliva…

Strength leeched from her body to pour into the dirt. She felt a hole opening beneath her, like the earth was becoming thinner somehow, and as it did the voice grew louder. Not taunting now. Cajoling, promising. For the second time in one night the dead called her, but this was seductive, not violent. If she let go she could have anything she wanted. If she gave up they would take care of her, they would erase all the bad memories and the pain and leave her light and free, filled with air.

She saw Terrible, his lips moving, but no sound reached her. All she heard were the whispers, words she didn’t recognize but understood. She opened her mouth to scream, but instead of her voice what came out was shiny and red, a satin ribbon of air curling into the thick darkness around her. She could give in and it would all be over. All the pain, the misery, all of the memories, gone. What she’d been trying to achieve over the years with pills and powders and hard knobs of Dream, she could have it now, she could cease to exist and find the oblivion she couldn’t find in life.

She reached for it. Her fingers closed around something cold and hard, something that cut into her palm with its sharp fierce edge.

Fire shot up her arm. Her blood had activated the metal, fed it, whatever it had done, but the cold blackness turned to heat, unbearable blue-white heat.

Through the haze of agony she felt hands circle her ankles and tug. She’d started to let go of the coin, but now she grabbed it again, squeezing harder, the pain a blessing that kept her conscious in the seconds before Terrible yanked her out of the circle.

Her vision returned in a rush, going from nothing to a confused series of images that failed to imprint themselves on her brain. Terrible hoisted her up over his shoulder and ran across the field while her hand burned and her stomach protested. A sharp piece of chain link scratched her cheek when he dove through the hole in the fence; she almost fell as he wrenched the car door open and practically threw her into it.

Music blared and gravel spewed behind them as he tore out of the parking lot. Chess looked down into her clenched fist. Blood dripped through her fingers onto her black jeans, soaking through them. In her hand was a copper amulet.