Unholy Magic

Chapter Eleven

She didn’t want to go in there. Did not want to, did not want to.

Too bad she didn’t have a choice. He was in there, he was a murderer and he was in there, it didn’t matter that she wasn’t prepared for this or that her heart was speeding along out of fear now instead of exertion. The bastard was following her, would keep doing it, and she had a chance to end this now. She’d be a cowardly fuck if she didn’t take it.

Without discussing it, she and Lex pressed their bodies together, leaving their knife hands free after she slipped her bag back over her shoulder and affording some kind of protection. If he leapt on them when they opened the door—which she was convinced he would—at least they would be as ready as it was possible to be.

The door should have been locked. During the day this place was, if not a hive of activity—nobody wanted to work here, it was too dangerous—busy enough. A lot of people died in Triumph City, and their bodies were by law disposed of in the ovens as soon as possible after death. There’d been some … issues, during Haunted Week and immediately after, as the dead tried in vain to return to their moldering corpses. As long as the body remained in existence, it was that much easier for the soul to return.

Lex glanced at her. She nodded. Together they shouldered the door open, swinging it hard enough to fly back and hit the cement wall with a hollow boom.

Nothing happened. Good thing, too, because the small high windows were barely discernible, so covered in soot were they. No light showed in the cold ovens. Chess couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, or Lex beside her. But she felt him, oh yes. Sex beat against her skin, probed her, pulsed against her; she gritted her teeth and forced herself to ignore it. To fight it.

The air was warm and close, oily in her nostrils and against her lips. She was afraid to lick them, because the heaviness she smelled was death. Rendered human fat, pulverized human bones.

She tried not to breathe, ignoring her body’s need for oxygen. She was choking, dying, fighting the scream of pure terror that wanted to escape from her throat. Something tickled her cheek and she realized it was a tear.

Her speed-blown pupils dilated. What little light entered found the edges of the long steel ovens, resting now after a long day of immolating the city’s dead. Seven of them in this building, she knew. She’d been here once for school. She’d been threatened with another visit all her life, from one person or another.

Worse than the ovens, worse than the cloying sex-thick air, were the pale white-shrouded corpses lined along the far wall. They shimmered in the darkness, seeming to shrink and expand, shrink and expand. Were they moving? It was so hard to tell, it could be an optical illusion or it could be that the spirits of these dead had not settled yet, they were waiting …

Get a fucking hold of yourself!

She caught her breath, held it until her heart rate started to slow, then blew it out. This was bullshit.

Lex nudged her. She could barely make out his features, but his free hand on her wrist was familiar. He lifted it, motioning with both their arms toward the far wall. Right. The light switches were there, and the office. The other exit. Why the hell were they standing here? He’d probably escaped already, damn it.

They picked their way across the gritty floor, trying to move fast but hindered by the need for silence. Every step they took sounded like gunshots in her ears.

Or was that their steps? She swung her head to the right, back toward the stacks of bodies. There was movement there. Not the bodies themselves. Rats. Little more than dark spots against the white, and only a few of them, but her empty stomach clenched. Were they on the floor, crawling toward her, ready to climb up her legs …?

She gritted her teeth and looked away. Took another step. Her hand holding the knife swung in careful swoops through the air; she could feel Lex’s shoulder and upper body move as he did the same.

Then a shattering groan rent the air, a demon’s death rattle. The building shook.

The ovens roared into life. Their doors were open.

From utter darkness and silence to blazing red light in a matter of seconds. She’d felt exposed before. Now she literally stood blind in the center of a corpse warehouse, blinking furiously to try and get her pupils to shrink. White flames flashed before her eyes when she closed them, red-orange ones seared her retinas when she opened them.

The temperature in the room soared. Those doors were not supposed to open while the flames were on, it was too dangerous. Had he broken the mechanism? How the fuck—?

Sweat poured down her face. Her coat was too heavy, her bangs stuck to her forehead. She adjusted her grip on her knife with fingers already slick.

She grabbed Lex’s hand. His too was wet, as was his face. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, not now. They stood in the center of the inferno and waited for the inevitable attack.

Over the hiss of the flames she heard pipes rattle and clang. The rats, attracted to the heat, climbed onto the conveyor belts. By the time they realized they were being drawn to the fire it was too late. She watched one burst into flame like a tiny firework.

Lex urged her forward. There was still a chance they could catch him, or at least get out. They’d made it more than halfway through the room. The killer might have ducked into the office, might be up on the metal catwalk circling the room….

He was right in front of them. They were right in front—the bastard had a ghost with him.

She leapt to the side. Lex was already moving, driving his blade forward. Chess spun around swinging her knife, her left hand finding the zipper of her bag. Fast. Not fast enough. Cold hands closed around her throat.

Oh, fuck … Sex roared over her skin, immolating her like a corpse in a crematory oven, reducing her to nothing in a second. She barely existed; her body jerked in a painful, hideous, hateful orgasm she didn’t want, couldn’t control. And she was back in bed, fourteen years old, hating what they were doing to her, hating herself because she couldn’t help liking it, too, and shame washed through her like a red ocean full of dirty needles and broken glass tearing her skin from her bones. Her throat went raw but she kept screaming. Her tattoos seared like fresh brands. She was sinking, falling…. They were winning. They were beating her. Realization hit like a sledgehammer, and in it was iron determination. She wasn’t fourteen anymore. She wasn’t that child anymore, and she was not going to lie there and die. Not after everything she’d been through.

Nothing to kick at, nothing to fight. The hands squeezed, cutting off her breath, and worse than that cutting off her circulation. She found the slide with fingers made of rubber and yanked it back. The whole bag moved, but the zipper opened … just enough. She needed air. Even the searing hot air of the room, she had to have it, her vision was growing black…. She brought her right hand up, slashing at the ghost’s hand. It was solid on her, and she could damage a ghost’s solid parts. Its face … oh fuck oh shit, its eyes, those eyeballs suspended in the blank ether of its face—of her face—oh fuck no that wasn’t possible—

Thankfully her arm continued to move, dragging the knife down. The hand on her fluttered enough to let her take one desperate gasp of air and dig all the way into her bag. The dirt, the graveyard dirt, there was some in there, there had to be, holy shit …

Lex shouted. The killer shouted. Through the ghost she saw them struggling in the center of the floor, moving ever closer to the hungry mouth of the nearest oven. The flames inside leapt, anticipating their next meal.

She swung with her knife again, missed. Caught her own cheek with the tip and opened a long stinging cut. Good. The pain grounded her, made her mad.

She scrabbled in the bottom of the bag but could not find the dirt, could not find anything. Her head swam. She pulled out her hand and swiped it through the ghost, hoping even a few specks of dirt were on it, enough to sap at least some of the spirit’s strength.

It worked. Only for a second or two, but it worked, and a second or two was all she needed. She brought both hands up between the ghost’s arms, shoving out as she ducked down, catching it just at the wrists where it started to solidify.

She hit the ground spinning, rolled herself back to a stand. There had to be something here, something she could use. No point hunting for more dirt, there wasn’t time. The baggie must have spilled while she ran. Electricity? Her electric meter was still in her bag, she could reverse the leads, use the ghost’s own power against her, but then what? It wouldn’t be enough to short her out, and simply solidifying her meant nothing. She could make the ghost feel pain that way but couldn’t really hurt her, couldn’t trap her. Flames? Pure heat energy. Maybe it would work. At least it would destroy those horrible naked eyeballs, and even that would be a huge relief.

Chess cut around Lex and the killer, locked in grim battle, closer still to the oven. Not that one. The thought flashed in her mind to catch the killer with her knife, help Lex out, but the ghost made a swipe for her. She managed to duck, banging her knee on the cement floor, and the opportunity was gone.

This was going to hurt.

She sprinted back toward the front door, drawing the ghost away from Lex and the killer. If she failed, he didn’t need to be distracted, needed at least a second or two to try and get away.

The conveyor belt wasn’t what she’d expected. It was made of a dull flexible metal, clanking softly as it rounded the bumpers and wheels. The edges of the belt were thin iron rods. Excellent. She took a deep breath and leapt onto it.

Heat blasted her, worse even than before, worse than in the spirit prison earlier. She felt her lips crack almost immediately. Her vision blurred again. Shit, the last thing she needed was not to be able to see, this had to be timed perfectly.

The ghost lunged for Chess, manipulating her body unconsciously to land on her stomach on the belt—ghosts weren’t good at jumping, for whatever reason. Good.

Her thighs burned. She wanted to scream. It felt like she was about to burst into flames … and she was …

The ghost came toward her now, her murky lips parting into what looked like a grin as she anticipated Chess’s death, probably imagining sucking Chess’s energy away like a milkshake through a straw. And Chess wasn’t at all sure she wouldn’t get the chance.

The steel frame of the oven seared her skin when she reached back and braced her palms on it. She stepped forward on the belt, forward again, to keep from stumbling. If she fell, all was lost. She could not get away—

The ghost leapt. Chess inhaled, held it. Her thighs tensed. She bent her arms and launched herself up and back while the ghost slid into the oven.

The smell of burning fabric hit her nose. Her jeans were smoking, about to catch fire. She leapt up, not waiting to see if the fire had actually overloaded the ghost. If it had, she was safe. If it hadn’t, she was dead. No point in spending her last seconds worrying about it.

Instead she ran the length of the oven, her boots thundering on the steel, and leapt off the other end.

Lex’s knife clanged against the cement. The killer screamed. She reached them just in time to stop Lex from bringing the knife down again in a killing blow.

Lex fought for a second, but stopped when he realized it was her. She didn’t waste any time.

“What are you doing?” her voice croaked from her throat, unrecognizable. She thought of getting her water bottle but decided against it. It would look weak. “What are you doing to them?”

The killer laughed. In the red glow of the fires he looked like a demon of the old legends. Sigils and markings covered his skin so completely he appeared to be made of them, featureless, his eyes black, his teeth stained with blood. “You,” he said in a steam-hiss voice. “I know you. You’re very nosy, aren’t you?”

Her heart rate tripled. He knew her? The eyes … the eyes in the car. He must have seen her with Terrible the day before, seen her in the alley … followed them to the diner? Followed her home? She felt Lex glance at her, willed her features to stay calm. Her palms stung; she was clenching her fist so hard her nails broke the tender, tight skin.

“Give her the answer,” Lex said. “Give her the answer fore I—”

The killer almost smiled, those reddish teeth gruesome in his decorated face. “You think you can threaten me?”

Fuck this, she was thirsty, and she couldn’t think straight. The first drink made tears spring to her eyes. She felt it seep through her body; it was better than sex. Too bad she couldn’t enjoy it.

He knew her, knew her car, knew where she worked….

The killer laughed again. Lex glanced up at her; Chess saw the danger then, saw what the killer planned, what he wanted, but it was too late.

The killer screamed something. Chess didn’t recognize the words but felt their power blast over her skin. The killer’s eyes rolled back in his head, pure white; his ghost, returned in his body, sprang from it fully formed. He’d summoned her, let her take form again through him. He shoved Lex off him as easily as if Lex were a child, leapt to his feet, and ran. Straight for the stairs, dragging the blind ghost behind him.

Chess lunged, tried to stop them, but missed. Killer and ghost tore up the stairs and along the walkway and had flung themselves out the window at the top before she could get up; when she and Lex ran outside to look, they were gone.

Their energy remained, thick and heavy but fading fast. Chess didn’t care. Every bone and muscle in her body screamed for rest; she felt like she’d snorted a full ashtray. And the sex magic wouldn’t be fading so fast if they were nearby. Maybe they had a car?

“Shit.” Lex wiped his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. “All that and we get nothing for ourselves, aye?”

“Not exactly,” Chess said. Those eyes … that face. Fuck, who was going to believe this? Would—well, Terrible would, she knew that. But … shit. Yeah, he’d believe her. All she had to do now was come up with an explanation for why she was hanging around in Slobag’s territory at midnight with Lex. Or make up a damned good lie.

“What’s your meaning there?”

“I know who the ghost is.”

“Aye? How’d you get that?”

The wind blew Chess’s hair from her forehead, dried her sweat, and left her feeling encased in ice from the chin up. Almost exactly how she’d felt when she’d seen the Remington file. “I’ve seen her picture before. Her name is Vanita. She was a murder victim.”

There didn’t seem to be enough drugs in the world to help her forget the sight of those bloody eyes floating before her, but she would certainly try. She grabbed four Cepts, thought better of it, and put one back. Lex would have Oozers. She’d ask him for one before she went home.

Home … It was all she wanted, and it would take forever to get there. If she was even safe there. The killer knew her, she couldn’t stop thinking it like a scratched record skipping over and over again in her head. He knows where I live, he knows where I live …

They trudged back along the streets, not saying much, letting the icy air cool them down. Her water bottle was as empty of liquid as her body felt.

Finally Lex spoke. “So why come a murdered ghost kill other people? Kill hookers too?”

“Yeah. Ghosts … especially murder victims, they just hate. They get stuck in whatever pattern they were in when they died, they don’t evolve or anything.”

“So this dame doing the killings works with some dude. Kills for they eyes? She see without em?”

She sighed. Her sweaty bangs were turning into little icicles. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Blind people become blind ghosts, and her murderer took her eyes, so I guess she needs them.”

He nodded. They walked on. “You staying at mine?”

“I should go home.”

“Ain’t sure that’s a good idea, with him knowin you and all. Maybe my place better, aye? Keep you safe.”

“I don’t have any of my stuff, and I have a lot to do tomorrow. I’ll be fine,” she said, but he was right, and she knew it. Her heart wouldn’t stop jackrabbiting in her chest, fear and exertion and speed making her movements jerky. She wished her Cepts would kick in.

“How bout I come along?”

“No, thanks.”

“Get your stuff then, an come back to mine. Ain’t joking, Tulip.”

His concern made her skin crawl. One minute he’d want her to stay at his place to keep her safe, the next he’d want to stay at hers, and before she knew it … ugh.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to stay at his place, although she really wanted her own bed. It certainly wasn’t that she didn’t like the thought of having a warm body next to hers, tonight of all nights. She just couldn’t stand the thought of needing it. She didn’t want her life to be any of his business. Once people started thinking she was their business, they’d start wanting a say in what she did. Where she went, who she saw. What pills she took and how often. Addiction was a sensitive little plant; it needed privacy in which to grow. “Yeah, okay.”

“Come get you, I will. You get all your needs, aye, and ring me up.”

“Okay,” she repeated.

She just hoped it would be as safe as he thought. They’d followed her without her noticing. Nothing said they couldn’t do the same to Lex.