Pay Dirt (Lost Falls Book 2)

by Chris Underwood

  “Ozzy,” Lilian whispered again.

  I shook my head slowly. “We can’t run. We have to finish this.”

  With a cry of frustration, York pulled his hand out of Morley’s corpse. He spun around. I braced myself for another blast of his magic, but he barely paid us any attention at all. He swept past us and raised his hands toward the wraith.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Please. The Thirteenth Rib. Where is it?”

  The wraith stared at him with its glowing eyes. It didn’t move.

  York’s face twisted in anger. He jabbed a finger toward the wraith. “I hold the bones of your daughter. I hold the source of your existence. You will answer me!”

  The wraith’s black hole of a mouth opened. “You hold nothing,” it hissed.

  York stood, stunned. Then he licked his lips and turned his milky eyes on Lilian. “You. Revenant. I have heard of your powers. I need to speak with the body of Morley the Profane. I need to know what he knows.”

  “It’s too late,” Lilian said. “He’s been dead too long.”

  “You lie. He has been preserved well enough to extract the necessary information. You will do it.”

  While York was distracted by Lilian, I slowly reached out and grabbed the bag the rat had dragged over. Like York, it was coated in a thin layer of Isidora’s mind-burning red dust. I didn’t open it, but through the fabric I could feel the shapes of the objects it held.

  I looked around and found the wraith staring at me. It was impossible to read its face.

  “I’m willing to cut a deal, revenant,” York said to Lilian.

  “Yeah?” she said. “I don’t think you can afford my services.”

  “I beg to differ. Don’t you want to know who killed you, Godwin? Don’t you want to know who you were?”

  Lilian went very still. “You’re lying,” she whispered. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I have been taught much. Help me, and I will tell you everything I know.”

  “You’ll just destroy me as soon as I do what you want,” she said.

  “I won’t need to. You will destroy yourself. I will help you get the revenge you seek. And your soul will find peace at last.”

  She swallowed. I watched the wheels spinning in her head.

  She licked her lips. Hesitated. Then looked up into York’s milky eyes.

  “Sorry. I don’t make deals with people like you.”

  A flicker of rage passed across York’s face. “Then let the light take you all.”

  He reached for me, fingertips extended. I could feel the heat coming off them as they reached toward me.

  Lilian and I moved at the same time. As I scrambled back, Lilian threw herself forward.

  She tackled York with all her considerable strength. As soon as she touched him, I heard a hiss, like steak cooking in a pan. She started to scream.

  As her pain rang in my ears, I stopped at the edge of the circle that held Morley’s Vengeance. Its eyes blazed down at me.

  “You remember what we said before?” I held up the bag Isidora’s rat had delivered to me. “Do we have a deal?”

  The wraith didn’t respond. Behind me, Lilian’s screams were growing weaker.

  “One way to find out,” I muttered to myself.

  I dragged my foot through the line of silver and liquid ash.

  As soon as I broke the circle, the wraith became a streak of movement. As it swept toward me, my eyes snapped shut. I waited to feel the wraith’s blade cut into my neck.

  I was buffeted by an icy wind. It swept through me, past me. And then it was gone. I opened my eyes.

  Lilian had fallen screaming against a stone cube. Above her, his hand to her throat, stood York. His mouth was open wide to bellow a righteous shout. Where his fingers touched Lilian’s throat, her skin was black and smoking.

  The wraith appeared behind him, its blade hanging at its side. It made no sound, but York sensed its presence. He turned, his brow furrowing in confusion.

  The wraith moved, almost too fast to see. There was a faint hum.

  Morley’s Vengeance returned its blade to its side. York’s headless corpse slumped to the floor.

  As his hand left her, Lilian’s scream became a choking gasp. She clutched at her burned throat and looked up at the wraith. It hovered over her, staring down with burning eyes.

  “Now,” it hissed, “release me.”

  35

  It didn’t take Lilian long to make the preparations. I offered to help, but she told me none-too-subtly to butt out. I probably would’ve just slowed her down, anyway.

  Not that I actually wanted to get too deeply involved in Lilian’s brand of magic. It made my skin crawl. But it was better than just standing around in a dead witch-finder’s tomb while his wraith loomed over us.

  Lilian’s ritual required the use of both of our phones and the batteries from one of our two flashlights. I hoped like hell we had enough juice left in the remaining flashlight to get back to the surface. She hooked them all up with a pocketful of wires and iron nails she’d brought with her. Then, when she was ready, she held out her hand to me.

  “The bag,” she said.

  I jumped at the chance to be useful. I grabbed the drawstring bag that Isidora’s rat had liberated from the cultists in the tunnel outside. The contents of the bag rattled as I handed it to Lilian.

  She pulled it open and upended it on the ground. Out clattered a human skull and a small collection of what looked like hand and finger bones. The skull had been marked with a daub of red paint on each of its cheekbones and a touch of blue in the center of its forehead. Some sort of identification code, maybe, or a death rite I wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t know all the ins and outs of how the vampires of Lost Falls interred their dead swains.

  Aside from the paint, the skull of Morley’s daughter seemed to be in good condition. It was missing some teeth—I hoped that meant she’d lived to a ripe old age before peacefully passing away. I hoped the vampire who’d taken her all those years ago had treated her well. As well as a bloodslave can be treated, anyway.

  Without any reverence, Lilian picked up the skull, brushed off some of the dust still clinging to it, and set it down in front of her. She grabbed a couple of iron nails, and using a broken chunk of black stone she hammered them into either side of the skull. I looked away as she did it, but the cracking of bone didn’t make for a pleasant sound.

  Morley’s Vengeance didn’t react. It just stared wordlessly at the skull, a blurred figure even while it was still.

  I looked back at Lilian to see her wrapping the bared ends of a couple of wires around the nails she’d hammered into the skull. The other ends of the wires were connected to the mess of phones and batteries she’d hooked up, which in turn led to cables she’d looped around her wrists. When she was done, she glanced up at the wraith.

  “You need to be touching the skull when I sever the connection. Relax your hold on reality as much as possible.”

  The wraith didn’t move. It was silent for a moment, then it hissed, “She will be free?”

  “You both will.”

  Morley’s Vengeance let out a low thrumming sound. Then it swept forward and lowered itself down. With a semi-ethereal hand it touched the top of the skull’s head.

  Lilian glanced at me. “You might want to step back.”

  I nodded and gave them some space. As I backed up, I heard a squeak behind me. I glanced down to see Isidora’s rat perched on a stone cube next to me, watching the show.

  “Should’ve brought some popcorn, huh?” I said.

  The rat just twitched its whiskers.

  Lilian stood, holding the jerry-rigged phones. The wraith didn’t look at her. Its attention was focused on Sigrid’s skull.

  “Ready?” Lilian asked.

  The wraith hissed in the affirmative.

  Lilian hesitated. Just for a second.Then her hand moved, and light like a camera flash filled the tomb. I heard the faint sound of something cracking.


  The light faded almost instantly. When I blinked the colored spots out of my eyes, I saw Lilian standing alone. Morley’s Vengeance was nowhere to be seen. Where he had been, only Sigrid’s skull remained. A crack now ran along the top of the skull, connecting the two nails with a streak of black.

  Lilian dropped the MacGyvered phones and let the wires slip from her wrists. She swayed a little on her feet, but she didn’t fall. I came up behind her.

  “It’s done,” she said.

  I nodded. “Every time I blink you seem to get a little more powerful.”

  “That wasn’t power,” she said. “It was just…cutting away an anchor.”

  She was staring down at Sigrid’s skull. I touched her shoulder.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I think so. I just…”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “Did I do the wrong thing? The wraith was suffering. But he deserved to suffer for what he did to this town. To save ourselves, we gave him forgiveness.”

  “That wasn’t forgiveness, Slim. None of this was.”

  “No? Then what was it?”

  I thought about it. “Peace.”

  “Peace?”

  “Making war is easy. Making peace, that’s the hard part.”

  She finally turned away from Sigrid’s skull to offer me a half-smile. “Another one of Early’s proverbs?”

  I shook my head. “That one’s all me.”

  She moved into my arms. I held her tight. After a few seconds she started shaking a little, but it didn’t last long. When we drew apart, it was like she hadn’t been crying at all.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen.”

  She started to turn away, but I grabbed her arm. “Hey. You’re nothing like that wraith. You know that, right?”

  “Two murdered souls, both kept from the grave by an insatiable thirst for vengeance. You have to admit, there are some similarities.”

  “The wraith was always doomed. You’re not.”

  She paused. “When I severed his connection to the bones, let his soul go free, I felt something.”

  “What?”

  “Like you said. Peace.” She came back to me, putting the base of her fist softly against my chest. “You know how this ends, don’t you, Ozzy?”

  I swallowed, looking down at her. Then I nodded. “I know. But it’s not the end yet.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Not yet.”

  It was a few minutes later that I realized Holden and Ursula still hadn’t emerged from the side passage. Maybe they’d stuck their heads so deep in the sand they hadn’t noticed that all the screaming and gunshots had stopped. Or maybe they were too busy cataloging their loot to care. I left Lilian to prepare for the journey home and made my way down the passage.

  It led to a small room of black glass, a simplified version of the main hall. There were no stone cubes littering the floor, but as with the main hall a sarcophagus was strung up on ropes of black stone. One of the members of Morley’s retinue, presumably.

  The main difference between this room and the main hall was a small fountain tucked into one of the alcoves at the back of the room. A trickle of water flowed down a geometric black glass sculpture and flowed into a hollow on the floor that passed beneath the sarcophagus. Pretty fancy for a tomb. Maybe it was some sort of mechanism for ensuring the sarcophagus’ occupant stayed put. Running water was an anathema to several types of Strangers.

  It seemed like Holden and Ursula had chosen this room to set up camp. Empty food packaging was scattered about the room. In one corner I noticed a thin blanket that had been rolled up to use as a pillow.

  As for Holden and Ursula themselves, though, they were nowhere to be seen. Neither were their bags of loot. I glanced around the walls, but there were no other doors leading out of this room. No places for them to hide.

  As I scanned the room a second time, I spotted a scrap of paper on the floor by the makeshift pillow. I picked it up. It was the same type of paper Holden had sent me with that first message—thick parchment that Ursula probably used for her spells. Something was written on it in Holden’s handwriting.

  Hey, Ozzy. Sorry about leaving it like this. You and your girlfriend looked like you had everything pretty much under control, so we thought we’d skedaddle. Urs says she can sneak us out of here without bothering you. You should see this girl work. It’s really something. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. And not just because I’m filthy rich now.

  Hey, maybe I’ll send you a wedding invite. Depends on how mad you are.

  Anyway, thanks for the save, big guy. Expect another call from me next time I need a door unlocked.

  See you round,

  Holden

  I stared at the paper a few seconds, then threw my head back.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  My shout echoed through the tomb. I heard Lilian come running.

  “Ozzy?” she called down the passageway. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine. Just fine. Hey, next time some long lost friend asks me for a favor, remind me about this, okay?”

  “You got it, boss.”

  After a few seconds fighting off the urge to go chasing after Holden to shove his fucking note down his throat, I looked down at the note again. There was a postscript.

  P.S. I found something while we were sorting out our plunder. It’s in that blanket over there. Thought you might find it interesting.

  I lowered the paper and turned to the rolled up blanket that I thought had been used as a pillow. Shoving the paper in my pocket, I crossed the room and kicked open the blanket.

  There was something wrapped up inside. A slender chain fell out of the folds of the blanket. I pulled on it, drawing out a tarnished silver locket.

  I was hesitant to touch it with my bare hands. Who knew what bizarre magical artifacts Morley’s killers had buried with him? Hell, even they had preferred to just seal all this stuff away rather than divvy it up amongst themselves. That had to mean something, right?

  But eventually my curiosity got the better of me. Gingerly, I let the locket fall into my palm. It didn’t feel weird. It just felt…old. It was a large and oval-shaped with a cobalt inlay around the edges. I found a catch on the side and opened it.

  On the right-hand side was a tiny frame made of more cobalt. Inside was a braided section of blond hair. It had been preserved remarkably well. On the left-side was a photograph. It was black-and-white and badly faded. But I could just make out the two figures in the picture. One was a roguishly handsome young man with a waxed mustache. The other was a slim woman wearing a white dress with a collar that stretched up nearly to her ears. Her belly was round with child.

  I don’t know how long I stared at the picture in silence. I know I didn’t hear Lilian’s footsteps approaching until she called out to me.

  “Ozzy,” she said. “You ready?”

  I snapped the locket closed and slipped it into my pocket as I turned to her. She was standing in the opening to the passageway, her bag over her shoulder. At her feet, Isidora’s rat twitched its whiskers at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just gathering my strength.”

  “Where’s your friend and the witch?”

  “Already gone.”

  Lilian frowned. “How?”

  “Magic.” I shrugged and looked down at Isidora’s rat. “You should be real proud of your sister.”

  “You okay, Ozzy?” Lilian asked.

  “Don’t I look okay?”

  “You look like you want to punch something.”

  “It’s just…would it have been too much for him to stick around, make sure we didn’t all die horribly trying to save his ass? Maybe he could actually apologize for being a huge asshole or something. And would it have been so hard for—”

  “Ozzy.”

  “What?”

  “You did it. You saved him. Turned out he’s a prick, but you saved him. You saved them both. And you stopped the bad guys. That’s what mat
ters.”

  I blew air through clenched teeth. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah.” I took one last look at the room. “It’s just that—”

  “Ozzy.”

  “All right, all right. I’m letting it go.”

  Before we left, we checked the cultists York had brought with him to the tomb. Two of them were dead. One looked like he’d succumbed to Isidora’s brain burn. His face was covered in the red powder, so he’d got a pretty big dose of it. Another of the cultists had been shot, apparently by friendly fire. I guess blindly shooting at a rat in a dark tunnel while your brain is being melted by witchcraft isn’t exactly responsible gun use.

  The other two cultists—including the Viking—were unconscious but alive. Lilian threw one of them over each shoulder. We’d dump them somewhere close to the vertical mine shaft at the entrance to the complex. With York dead, I hoped they wouldn’t be much of a threat. With Isidora’s powder working on their brains, they might end up spending the rest of their lives in a care facility.

  My heart bled for them.

  I carried Daud’s body. The ghoul was pretty light, but he weighed heavily on my shoulders. I didn’t like the kid, but if he hadn’t tried to get the bones of Morley’s daughter to me, none of us would have survived. Hell, if he hadn’t given me the map in the first place, we never would’ve beaten York here.

  It wasn’t fair. I’d had my second chance. Holden was onto his fifteenth or sixteenth. But Daud had been killed before he got his. All I could do was tell myself that he’d helped stop a threat to Lost Falls. In doing so, he’d protected those he cared about. His sacrifice hadn’t been for nothing. I hoped that was enough.

  It was night by the time we got out of the mine. A clear night, full of stars. They lit the way back to the car, back to town. Lilian and I didn’t speak much. Isidora’s rat had gone quiet and passive in my pocket. Isidora would undoubtedly be exhausted from maintaining a connection to the rat for so long. So was the rat itself.