Pay Dirt (Lost Falls Book 2)

by Chris Underwood

  As I tried to figure out how to contact her, I heard the crunch of gravel behind us. We turned around.

  Daud was looking about as well as could be expected. Half his face was bandaged, and fresh scars ran up both his bare arms. He’d cleaned himself up a little, but I could still see dried blood crusted around his nose and mouth. Like the other ghouls he was dressed in a ratty old white T-shirt, but since there were no stains on it yet I was guessing he was running late for the funeral. He stood just outside the door leading into the abandoned passenger car that Sal called home. He was staring right at us.

  A second passed. I resisted the urge to reach for my truncheon. I could see his fingers start to close into a fist.

  He broke eye contact with me to glance toward the mourners gathered around Habi’s body. None of them had noticed us yet. Some of the tension left his muscles. He looked back at me, then jerked his head to follow. He turned back toward the door of the passenger car and climbed in with no small amount of trouble.

  “He looks friendly,” Lilian whispered.

  “Wait here,” I said. “Stay out of sight.”

  “You sure you don’t want backup?”

  I wasn’t sure about anything. But if I was going to talk to Daud, I had to do it alone.

  “If I start screaming,” I said, “come rescue me.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  She retreated back into the shadows while I crossed a couple of rail lines to get to Sal’s passenger car. Daud had already gone inside. With a glance around to make sure my presence hadn’t been noticed by the mourning ghouls, I climbed up and went into the passenger car. My fingers itched for my truncheon again. If Daud thought he could get an easy sucker punch in, he was mistaken.

  But when I came to the compartment Sal had claimed as her room, I found Daud sitting on the cot, his hands empty. He didn’t look like a threat. He looked like a grumpy kid who’d been beat to hell. I hesitated a moment, then went inside and sat down on the cot opposite. The compartment was uncomfortably small. My knees almost touched Daud’s.

  “Sal says you brought me here the other night,” he said.

  “Barefoot, too. Uphill through the snow.”

  “Why?”

  I shook my head. “Come on, kid. What else was I gonna do? Leave you there to die of hypothermia? If you didn’t choke on your own blood first, that is.”

  “Why not?” he said. “What difference would it make to you?”

  “You really don’t see how that would’ve looked? Do you even understand how this community survives, kid?”

  “Don’t call me kid.”

  I ignored him and pointed out the window, toward the lightening horizon. “We’re not enemies. Our enemies are out there. Circling. Waiting. I’ve met some of them the last couple of days. Let me tell you, they’re a real fucked-up bunch. They want to see us all burn. The vampires, the ghouls, the goblins. The hag. Me. Even you, kid.”

  “Don’t call me kid!” he snapped.

  “But you are a kid. You’re a vicious little shit. You’re angry and desperate and too dumb to know how stupid you really are.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but I plowed right on.

  “And you know what?” I said. “I used to be just like you. Worse, probably. I was young and I’d tasted real pain for the first time. I made a deal and found myself with power and a burning desire to put it to use. I abandoned my family, my friends, and went in search of monsters to fight.

  “But I’m not your monster. I’m not the one who killed Habi. And the witch isn’t either. Habi was killed because he got in over his head. He got killed because he was rash and desperate and overconfident.” I paused, sighed. “And he got killed because I made mistakes. Because I didn’t help him like I should’ve.”

  The anger had left Daud’s face. His eyes were downcast. I’d expected to have to fight to convince him of the truth of Habi’s death, but I could tell most of what I was saying he knew, or at least suspected.

  “Why did you rip those pages out of Habi’s journal?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. His eyes remained fixed on my knees.

  I leaned forward. “Habi told you what he found, didn’t he? He told you about the tomb.”

  Daud still didn’t look at me. But he gave me a slow nod.

  “And when he died, you found his journal and took the pages. You took the map he made.”

  “I didn’t believe him,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Habi always had some get-rich-quick scheme on the go. He was always bragging about his latest find. I thought this was the same. When he came back here that night, looking all scared, I didn’t take him seriously.”

  “You’re not the only one who made that mistake,” I said. “Maybe we’ll both carry that regret with us the rest of our lives. But that’s something to worry about tomorrow. Today, we’ve got something else to think about. Revenge.”

  Daud blinked and lifted his eyes to meet mine.

  “I know what killed Habi,” I said. “I’ve seen it.”

  “What…what is it?”

  “A splinter of a dead man’s soul. An abomination. A wraith. I mean to destroy it.” Or die horribly in the attempt, I thought. “But to do that, I need your help, Daud.”

  I saw him swallow. It seemed to cause him some pain. His resolve hardened, and for the first time he looked less like a little punk and more like a young man.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “Three things. You saw Habi’s map when it was still intact. You read his notes. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The wraith is headed to the tomb. If I don’t stop it there, we’re all screwed. This thing is nasty. It was born from a twisted soul. It’s going to kill the rest of the people who found the tomb, but I don’t think it’ll stop there. It’ll start going after friends. Family. This whole community, maybe. That’s what it was created to do. So I need to find that tomb, kid. I need to find it now. You’re my last hope. Tell me you remember something from that map.”

  “I’ll do you one better,” he said, and he reached into his pocket. “I made a copy.”

  He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and held it out to me. For a second, I didn’t move. Then with trembling fingers, I took the paper and unfolded it.

  “After we found Habi,” Daud said, “I thought maybe I’d go looking for whatever it was he found.” He didn’t sound particularly proud of himself. “Just to make sense of things, you know? Dumb idea. I copied out the map and used Habi’s notes to try to pinpoint it. That was as far as I got before I got word of the witch in the woods.”

  I studied the map. It lacked Stuckey’s careful annotations and encyclopedic knowledge of Lost Falls’ mining history. But it was all here. It matched what I remembered from my brief glimpse of the original. If this didn’t lead me to the tomb, nothing would.

  “Not bad, kid,” I said. “Not bad at all.”

  “What else?”

  “Huh?” My attention was focused on the map, trying to drink it all in. If that little mark was Prince’s Creek Bridge, then the mine entrance had to be…

  “You said there were three things you needed,” Daud said. “What were the other two?”

  I looked up from the map. “Do you know where the vampires bury their swains?”

  He frowned, confused. “What do the vampires have to do with anything?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Do you know or not?”

  “Yeah. Of course. They’ve got a set of catacombs below one of the cemeteries just outside their territory.”

  “And when their thralls die, that’s where they go? Even ones that died fifty years ago? A hundred?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you get in there?”

  He cracked a small grin. “Yeah. We might’ve done it once or twice before.”

  “And since you’re still alive, I’m going to assume you didn’t get caught. If I give you the name of a dead swain, do you think you ca
n find their bones?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “How fast?”

  “How fast do you need?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Maybe I can get some friends to help.” He chewed his lip. “Is this to help you find the tomb?”

  “No,” I said. “This is a weapon. This will help me destroy Habi’s killer.”

  His jaw tightened. He nodded. “I’ll do what I can. What’s that name?”

  “Sigrid,” I said. “Need me to spell it?”

  “I got it.”

  “Good,” I said. “And the last thing. I need a cleanup crew.”

  28

  Early was asleep when I got home. He looked dead.

  His face was washed out and his beard seemed even messier than usual. He lay completely still, not a twitch of his eyelids or a murmur from his lips. After staring at him for several seconds I convinced myself he was breathing.

  The pungent smell of burning oils filled his bedroom. That had probably been at Early’s direction. The fumes would help reinvigorate him, revive him. But it would take time. The curse’s psychic backlash had taken its toll on him.

  I often ribbed Early about his age. But staring at him now, he looked beyond old. He looked ancient. I’d feared for his life before, but seeing him here, so still, so corpse-like, had me truly thinking for the first time about what I would do if he did die. Who would I turn to then? There was still so much I didn’t know, didn’t understand.

  “Sleep well, old man,” I muttered.

  He didn’t move. I quietly closed the door and left him to his rest.

  I wanted to stick around, be here when Early woke up. I couldn’t. This was a flying visit. I’d dropped by to restock my supplies and plan my route to the tomb while I waited for Daud and his ghoul friends to call me. Lilian was taking the chance to perform some self-surgery on her broken arm and shattered face in the bathroom of my cabin. I’d decided to leave her to it. I wasn’t sure my stomach could take watching her peel her own skin back to set the bones in her skull.

  The two dead cultists in the back of the stolen hatchback were taken care of. Daud had been happy to take them off our hands in exchange for arranging a pack of ghouls to clear away the wrecked car in the industrial park. I’d let Daud make the arrangements. I had him onside, but I wasn’t so sure about the rest of the ghouls.

  I hadn’t left Stuckey’s body with the ghouls. I didn’t mind feeding those asshole cultists to the ghouls, but Stuckey deserved a more appropriate funeral. For now, his body would remain wrapped in blankets on the floor of my workshop. Not the most noble resting place, but it would have to do for now. A few charms and a pile of ice packs would slow the decomposition process until I could work things out.

  Pushing thoughts of Stuckey’s body out of my mind, I got to the bottom of the stairs and started to head for the back door. But as I passed the dining room, I stopped and looked in. Isidora was sitting at the table, one leg propped up on another chair while she chewed on a slice of toast smeared with butter. She tore off a crust and pushed it through the bars of the cage sitting on the table in front of her. The rat inside grabbed the bread with its front paws and started chowing down.

  Like Early, the witch was looking a little pale. Beads of sweat dotted her face, like the effort of making breakfast had taken it out of her. She was still wearing the same clothes I’d last seen her in, except she’d torn one of the legs off her pants to expose the bandages wrapped around her thigh. It looked like she’d applied them herself.

  “You really should get a professional to look at that wound,” I said.

  She glanced up at me, then turned back to her toast. “And what kinds of questions do you think they would ask if I showed up in the ER with a gunshot wound?”

  “We know people. Medics friendly to our community. They can keep it off the books.”

  “Then why aren’t you visiting them? You’re looking pretty bad yourself.”

  “I’m a little busy right now.”

  “Sounds like it.” She took another bite of her toast. “Your friends were worried about you. I didn’t know how much more hand-wringing I could take.”

  “Then why’d you stick around?”

  She touched her fist to her wounded thigh. “Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”

  “Guess not. Towels are in the cupboard down the hall. Second door on the right. The shower downstairs is a bit fiddly. You gotta crank it up high for a couple of minutes before you turn the heat down.” I waved and turned away. “Enjoy your stay.”

  “Cunning man,” she said.

  I stopped and looked back.

  “Thank you for…you know…shoving me in the van. Getting me away from the museum.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Have you found them yet?” she asked. “My sister? Your friend?”

  “I know where they are.”

  “Are they safe?”

  “No. Not by a long shot.”

  She glared down at her wounded thigh. I saw the anger of helplessness sweep across her face.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll do whatever I can to get your sister back. I promise.”

  Isidora nodded. “I have something I want you to take with you.”

  “What?”

  She nudged the cage containing the rat toward me.

  “Your rat?” I asked.

  “She’s not mine,” she said. “She’s Ursula’s. Well, she used to be. I’ve been using her to help track Ursula.”

  I glanced down at the rat. It stood on its hind legs with its front paws against the bars, sticking its nose out toward me. Its whiskers twitched as it sniffed at me.

  “I’m going to be honest,” I said. “I’m really confused. Why should I take a rat with me?”

  “I’ve forged a connection with the rat,” Isidora explained. “You’ve seen what I can do with that connection. It’ll take a lot of effort, but I’ll be able to see through the rat’s eyes. I can use her to help you.”

  “So it’s a construct? A familiar? It’s not real?”

  She shook her head. “It’s real.”

  “You’ve connected your soul to a real, living rat?” I dragged my hands through my hair. I could feel my voice rising. “Are you insane? You’ve bound your fate to a creature with a two year lifespan. If I stand on this thing while you’re inhabiting it, you’ll end up a lot worse than Early.”

  “Then watch where you’re putting your giant clown feet.”

  “How did you even…? That kind of magic is…” I threw up my hands, took a deep breath. “You know what? Never mind. Thanks for the offer, but no. I’ll be just fine without your little pet.”

  “Cunning man!” she said as I turned to leave again. There was a sharpness to her tone that made me stop. A desperation. “Please. Let me do this. My sister…I need…” She sighed. “Please.”

  “Why the hell is everyone so determined to get themselves killed?” I muttered to myself. “I’m the last sane man. It’s the only explanation.” I turned back to Isidora. “All right. Fine. It’s your funeral.”

  The rat stared up at me with its beady eyes. Ugly little bastard.

  “Can it ride in my pocket” I asked Isidora. “I’ve got too much shit to carry already. I don’t need a cage as well.”

  “Just be careful with her.” Isidora turned the cage toward herself and stared into the rat’s eyes. The rodent went still for a few seconds. Even its nose no longer twitched. The witch muttered a few words under her breath. I didn’t catch them.

  Then the rat seemed to come out of its trance. It settled back down on all fours and waited there docilely as Isidora opened the cage.

  She took the rat in her hands and began to hand it to me, but then she paused. “Wait. One more thing.”

  With one hand still grasping the rat, she rummaged through her pocket and pulled out something that looked like a folded up handkerchief. It wasn’t until she started to put it on the rat that I rea
lized what it was: the little backpack the rat had been wearing when Isidora and I assaulted the museum.

  “You got a little rat lunch box in there too?” I asked.

  Ignoring me, she finished tying the harness around the rat’s body. Then she held the creature out for me to take.

  A memory flashed through my head: a hundred rats crawling up my body, over my face. With a shudder, I suppressed the memory and reached out. Without hesitation, the rat jumped onto my hand, crawled up my forearm, and dived into my pocket.

  All right, with the backpack and everything, the rat was pretty cute.

  “Good luck, cunning man,” Isidora said. “Don’t fuck this up, okay?”

  “I promise nothing.”

  Daud still hadn’t called an hour later. I found myself pacing back and forth in my cabin, one eye on the clock. The hell was taking him so long?

  I dialed his number again and brought my phone to my ear. Once more it went straight to voicemail. Either his phone was off or he was somewhere without signal.

  “Where are you, kid?” I said to the ghoul’s voicemail. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. We can’t wait any longer. I’m sorry. I’ll have to figure something else out. We’re heading to the tomb now. Call me if you find the bones.”

  I hung up just as Lilian emerged from the bathroom. She was wearing an old hoodie of mine. It was so loose on her she could’ve used it as a sleeping bag, but it did a decent job concealing her face. I didn’t know what exactly she’d done, but now she looked much less like walking roadkill and more like someone who’d been in a bad skiing accident a couple of weeks ago.

  I stopped in my tracks, my sense of urgency momentarily fading. “Did you use my stapler to reattach your skin flaps?”

  “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered, Turner.” She frowned at me. “Still nothing?”

  I shook my head “It was nothing but a wild chance anyway. I can’t afford to wait any longer. If we’re going to have any chance of beating York and the wraith to the tomb, we have to go now. If you’re still up to it—”