“And so the meek call on something foul to deal with the foul.”
He looked at Conjer in bemusement. “Yes.”
“And this will save the whole city?”
“Why do you ask?”
Conjer smiled, hungered by the opportunity before him. He rose slightly off his seat and grabbed the chair’s arms to drag it forward. The feet, shaped into the claws of some unknown beast, dug ruts into the wood with a low grating sound. Hollitack edged away, his resoluteness replaced by a grim mixture of terror and disgust.
Conjer sat down and pitched in, leaving only the space of a few inches between them. “I want twenty.”
The mayor shot to his feet. “You can’t be serious!”
He leaned back, amused. “I believe I can call my own terms, as Jed said you would allow. Was your man in error?”
Hollitack bit his bottom lip, frozen by the question.
Conjer snorted through the torn and tattered nostrils of his nose. “No man has ever talked me away from business once business has been set. The last one who tried got his head cut off. I can go away, John Hollitack, or I can kill The Hangman. You pick.”
The mayor of Hell’s Skin let his shoulders slump in submission. Gathering himself in a resigned sigh, he nodded.
***
Conjer pushed through the swinging half-doors of the tavern’s entrance. His iron spurs, dotted in red rust, jingled as the hard soles of his boots pounded the dirty floor. An afternoon shadow invaded the room, holding back the sunlight trying to pour through the two windows at the front of the establishment. Bloody bodies, not yet set in rot or rigor, lay about the corners of the bar. No one sat at the long wooden counter, a surface weighed in broken bottles. To his left, a narrow stair went up to the second level. The banister had been cracked in multiple places, and the high knob at the bottom of the rail had been removed with a clean cut. He took another step when a shuffling sound emanated from behind the bar. The sound was soft, more like the padding of a cat than a human.
Conjer drew his machete. “No use hiding.”
A figure slowly rose, and in the darkness he thought she might have been of a sickly sort, her skin pallid and grey. It was not until she neared that he knew what he truly saw.
Through the translucent light dusting her entire body, Conjer could make out the shape of the bar behind her, its edge and contours appearing first, then the dark stain of the wood. He tensed his hand around the handle of his weapon, staring through her as her mouth opened, jawing in effort to get the words out.
“Looking...for...a...good time...sugar?” The ghost of the tavern courtesan tried to stand to her full height. She was dressed in a long skirt of thick black lace, a tight red corset pushing her small breasts together on an emaciated sternum. Staggering across the floor, she reached for him, her hands outstretched claws. He sidestepped her lunge, bringing out his mother’s skull in a fluid draw.
“Fie, Fie, Fie on thee—” He started the incantation to bind the ghost into corporeal form, but before he could finish the spell his mother had taught him so long ago the ghost burst into a thousand pieces of light. Holding the skull at the spot where she had disintegrated, Conjer knelt to one knee, searching for any sign of how the courtesan had crossed into the next realm.
“You’ll have to pardon them. There is only so long a spell can last.”
A short man with a walking cane stood at the top of the stair. The lapels of his black pinstriped coat were backed with a fine gold fabric, while underneath he wore a clean white shirt that stretched over his slight but sinuous chest. His long black pants fell straight down, ending right above the ankles of his polished riding boots. A wide slouch hat made of dark leather capped his blockish head, revealing only a peek of his reddish-brown sideburns. Wrapped around his neck was a long piece of hemp cord, coarse and cracked from use.
“Ah, a kinder visitor,” the mortal said in his deeply accented voice, walking down the steps with his cane tucked under his armpit. “You are the first to not burst in here swinging a sword. This town seems to be bereft of any civility at all.”
“Well, don’t allow me to start a trend,” Conjer said. “One of us will not walk out of here.”
“Oh, there won’t be any walking, be assured,” he said. “But first, introductions. I rarely get to know my victims, sadly, though recently I have had better luck.”
“I know who you are,” he replied, rising from his crouch. “You’re The Hangman.”
The necromancer tipped his hat. “And you must be Mr. Conjer.”
Conjer knew by the man’s smirk that he had paused too long, revealing too much of his surprise. “Do we know each other?”
“Oh, I know you by reputation, my good corpse. You’ve killed enough people in this city over the centuries. Ghosts are a talkative sort.” The Hangman reached the bottom of the steps and stuck his hand into his jacket, drawing out a rumpled disk of black felt. “In all honesty I expected the mayor would have called you earlier in the week, but apparently he had to go and waste more powers upon me before turning to your father’s darkness.”
“You know nothing about my father.” Conjer squeezed his mother’s skull and glared at the amused necromancer.
“Come now, Mr. Conjer,” The Hangman said. “I know him. You and I both bow to his way, a way so glorious that only powerful men like you and I can walk it. We are not so different—”
Conjer raised his machete. “We’re different enough.”
“Oh dear.” The Hangman prodded the center of the disk in his hands, pushing it out until it popped into a round dome. “I really do wish you had come earlier. Sadly, I was left with more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. In fact, I just returned from a little jaunt in the desert. You gave me so much time that I was able to make myself presentable again.” He held up the familiar black bowler hat. “I brought a souvenir, in fact.”
Emma.
Conjer ran from the tavern for his horse, any thought of his mission torn away.
“I told you there would be no walking,” the necromancer shouted after him. The Hangman said something else, but his words were lost on the wind as Conjer mounted his horse and charged for home.
***
Conjer dug his spurs into the flank of the colt, making the beast bellow as they crossed over the last dune separating him from his tomb. The horse’s long tongue slapped against his equine face as the rider leaped from the saddle.
“Emma,” he called, running. “Emma!”
The body of Jed Tandish lay near the entrance, the ragged corpse drained of its blood. Stepping inside, Conjer drew out his mother’s skull. With the unbridled sun still bleaching the cloudless sky, the glare off the sand behind him made the chamber blacker than tar, so dark that not even his unnatural eyes pierced its depths.
“Light, light, light of the dead, open your eyes and see the dread,” he intoned, thrusting the skull in front like a lantern. He expected the sockets in his mother’s skull to pop in illumination, shedding a green light. The spell, old and ancient, crackled once before it fizzled out. Conjer turned the skull around in his hand to look at it, unable to believe a tool he had used for so long had failed him.
Laughter arose from the darkness, husky and alluring. “Oh, sweet boy. Still having trouble when I’m not around, I see.”
Conjer slowly raised his eyes in the direction of the voice. The ghost of a beautiful woman lounged on the stone lid of the coffin. Even with the translucent nature of her manifestation, her skin was dark, the color of chocolate, and smooth as silk. Wrapped around her voluptuous yet toned body was a dress made from a single piece of greenish leather, a garment he remembered from his youth when he was nothing more than a waif, wandering the desert to collect flowers and other plants for her enchantments. Ringlets of black hair fell around her shoulders in a waterfall that framed her perfect cheekbones. Barefoot and shorter th
an him by a full head, she was power personified, more than a simple ghost brought back from centuries of sleep.
To Conjer, the goddess had returned.
“Momma,” he croaked.
“At least you’ve kept your memory sharp all this time,” she said in a haughty tone. “Conjer, Conjer, Conjer...what’s wrong? Got sand on your tongue? Come give your momma a hug.” She held her thin arms out.
Conjer heaved as if the breath had returned to his body. “You can’t be here.” He fell one step backward. “You were dead too long to linger in this world.”
“So you thought,” she said slowly, words dripping with venom. Her feet struck the floor with a solid thud when she slid off the coffin, heavier than they should have been. “But thinking was never your strong suit.”
He fell back even farther as she stepped forward, dropping her skull. It hit the stone with a dull knock and rolled away. In a flash he drew the machete, holding it out to keep her at a distance. “Where’s Emma?” he shouted, trying to halt the tremor in his voice.
“Oh, that little vampire girl?”The ghost looked around the tomb in a disinterested manner and shrugged. “I left her somewhere.”
Conjer charged in, swinging for her neck.
The ghost simply stood there, shaking her head in annoyance as the pitted iron blade passed through her. “Well, I guess we will have to play like we used to.” She smacked him in the chest, sending him flying. Conjer collided with a wall and struck the floor face-first. Pushing up on his hands and knees, he watched as she walked to his fallen weapon and retrieved it.
The ghost flicked the blade around in a quick circle. “There. Back where it belongs.” She came forward, her hair writhing like a mass of snakes trying to untangle themselves from a great ball.
Conjer rolled to his bottom and scooted until his back touched the wall. His mother stood over him like she had in his childhood, batting menacingly at his hands as he tried to keep her away.
“Look at you. Just look.”She kicked at his shins. “So much work, so much effort your father and I put into making you, and all you do is sit in this chilly hole. You should be a god, not some damned monster selling his power for a few worthless souls here and there while you toil away the eons with some little white tart. I made you to be so much more.”
He kicked back, his feet passing through her legs. “Then you should have raised me better.”
The ghost cut at him. Yellow molars cracked and broke, shooting out of his sliced mouth and scattering in pieces across the floor. He pawed at the side of his face with a groan and tried to crawl after them. Fingers poked through the ugly gash in his cheek, prodding his dry grey tongue. The magic of the votive still hanging on his saddle outside started to knit the ruined flesh back together.
“Seems you actually did something worthwhile.” She smiled, turning to the door. “I was wondering where my little pots went.”
Conjer laid a hand on his broken teeth, but collapsed back to the stone, his mother’s foot on his back. He tried to push up a second time, but the weight of the phantasm held him in place like a stake.
“No matter,” she said, pressing the wide point of the machete against the nape of his neck. “All it means is that we go piece by piece. I can start over from there.”
For the first time in a long time, Conjer felt it—the emotion that had hounded him every day when she was alive, the terror of knowing that at any moment she could cut into him again, invade his body with something that wasn’t supposed to be there, be it cold iron or searing magic. He fought back a child-like whimper, a haunting sound lost so long ago in the faded corners of his memory. Facing the renewed darkness of the past, he was about to shut his eyes when Emma dashed from the shadows, his mother’s skull clutched in both hands. She threw her entire body into a powerful swing.
The ghost of his mother pitched to the side, stumbling as she tried to hold her form solid. She came back around, her empty eyes seething in blue light. “You stupid slut!”
Emma tossed the skull to Conjer. “The spell!”
“Fie, fie, fie on thee, fill your step and like flesh be,” he cried, nearly fumbling the words with his wounded mouth. To his surprise the skull quaked, and a green light burst forth in a stream at his mother. It struck her solidly in the chest. Pausing as the emerald glow around her subsided, she glanced to the ground and nearly jumped in horror at her own shadow, cut from the daylight flooding in from outside the tomb.
“She’s solid,” Conjer said, feeling sensation return to his tongue and jaw.
His mother glared at him in absolute hatred. “You dare t—”
Emma belted her across the face, knocking her to the ground. The machete clattered to the floor, and she snatched it up.
Conjer’s mother rose to her knees, defiant as she faced the vampire. “You’re nothing, little girl. You’ll never be me.”
“And he’ll never be yours, bitch.” Emma twisted her entire body into the cut.
As the severed remains fell, both parts exploded in a small cloud of luminous energy, leaving behind a thin layer of crystalline dust. Conjer stared at the spot, trapped between his relief that his mother was gone and wishing she had remained.
That conflict was washed away when Emma turned toward him. Half her face was swollen by a great bruise, so black it was as if someone had painted it on. Dried blood crusted her nostrils, and her hair was tangled in many places. She limped over, dragging the heavy iron blade, and offered a hand to help him up.
“You all right, Conjer?” she asked.
This time Conjer did not shy away.
***
“He came not long after you had left. I was hiding in the tomb from the daylight when he entered. I didn’t think he saw me as he worked, pushing back the lid of the coffin and raising her,” Emma said, her hands tight on his stomach.
Conjer squeezed his legs around the horse’s trunk, forcing the colt into a faster trot. The sun had disappeared from the world a few hours before, and the stars sat enthroned in the sapphire sky, twinkling and cold. “Then what happened?”
“It was beautiful. I’d never seen lights glitter the way they did when he made her skeleton rise up and stand before him. It was as if sand leaked from every bare joint, flowing over her arms and legs like a drizzle of crystals. They talked for a little while in a language I didn’t understand and he made her laugh until he started to leave. I thought she would follow him. When he was walking out the door he stopped and looked at the corner I was hiding in, behind those ruined columns. You know the ones I’m talking about?”
“Yeah,” Conjer said. “I know them.”
“It was like he had known the entire time. He smiled at me, and your momma was there in an instant. I don’t remember a lot about what happened. I just know at some point I stopped feeling her fists on my face.”
Conjer let go of the reins with one hand and laid it across hers where she had folded them in front of his body. He could not feel whether her flesh was warm or cold, just the bones and the skin—it was enough. “How are you now, Emma?”
With her wounded face pressed into his back, she hummed at the question before answering. “I’m better,” she said, tightening her embrace.
Conjer did not mind that. Riding in the darkness of the untamed desert, caught in the gritty wind and the shifting sands beneath, the peace of the barren wastes offered little respite from the reality he rode towards. The black shape of Hell’s Skin loomed, its points slowly breaking the crests of the hills. “We won’t run, you know.”
“Why?” she asked. “You have your freedom and we have the world. Why fight?”
“He went too damn far for my tastes.”
“By raising your mother?”
“By hurting you.”
The streets of the city’s outskirts were deserted, empty of even the whores and their handlers. A ball of tumbleweed bou
nced down the main road, leaving behind shards and twigs.
“It’s so quiet,” Emma said.
“There’s a lot of dead.”
“I remember when Elijah and I used to take walks at night, and even then it wasn’t this empty. You could always find a bar open or something...” Emma’s words drifted off. “What are we going to do against a city of ghosts, Conjer?”
He felt the weight of his mother’s skull in the bag hanging from his shoulder, re-empowered and able to make those who walked between worlds solid. He checked down an alley as they passed. Barrels choked its mouth, a desperate attempt at what he assumed had been a fortification by the humans to keep ghosts from going around the back of the buildings. A smile worked its way onto his dead face. “We’ll manage.”
“Well that’s good, because it’s starting.”
Off in the distance the paved road of gray and black cobblestones terminated in a public square, the intersection of two roads. Set in the center of the space was a stage five feet in height, built of broken pieces of plank and support beams ripped from the columns of storefronts. From the center of that platform rose a gibbet, its arm strung. At the bottom of the noose kicked a man, his eyes wide as his face turned from a deep shade of red to a light blue. Hundreds of people knelt around the stage in their bedclothes, guarded by a multitude of spirits arrayed at the square’s four entry points.
“Next!” The Hangman, dressed in his dapper black suit, danced at the edge of the stage. He tapped his feet, humming a merry tune while marching back and forth with his cane spinning in his fingers.
The ghosts dashed into the crowds, snatching and pulling at mortal arms to drag forward the next victim. The Hangman stood proud, a wide smile as he watched his enslaved helpers pluck from the terrified masses a familiar face.
The Big Bad II Page 17