by Stacia Kane
Limp. She forced herself to go limp, fighting every instinct she had. Lauren would relax, wait for it, she’d think Chess was dead and oh, fuck her lungs were about to explode and the need to move, to breathe, to fight hammered inside her like the worst withdrawals ever and her heart screamed and ached because she was about to die and there was something she hadn’t done, something she hadn’t ever done in her life, and she should have and she needed to and it was too late.
Lauren flew off her. Air rushed into Chess’s lungs, she couldn’t get enough, great gasping lungfuls of it flavored with herb smoke and blood and so fucking sweet she wanted to bottle it. For a moment she lay there gasping the dizziness from her head, until her vision cleared and she saw Lauren scrambling away from Terrible’s heavy footsteps. How had he known it was her?
Lex’s gore-spattered blue robe clung wetly to him; he looked like a ceremonial butcher at Festival time. Blood dripped off his hands as he quickly dispatched the Lamaru who’d helped Lauren hold Chess down. No time to thank him; she reached out, brushed his sleeve, turned away after Terrible. Her makeshift apron banged her knees; of course. She had that. Lauren didn’t.
Terrible had caught Lauren; she was trapped beneath him, both her arms twisted behind her back and clasped in his fist. Her face was twisted in pain; shit, was that what Chess actually looked like? She’d never thought her nose was so pointy; it didn’t seem so pointy in the mirror, but—She shook her head. This was not the time to get distracted.
Terrible wasn’t distracted; his head moved constantly, checking everyone out, looking to see if any other Lamaru were around.
Chess settled her hand on his sweaty shoulder for a second, said his name. Were his eyes a little too bright?
No time to worry about it. She reached for Lauren’s neck instead, aiming for the thin silver chain digging into Lauren’s skin, certain she knew what it was.
She wasn’t disappointed. Lauren struggled but Terrible held her fast so Chess could haul up the fetish, the talisman Lauren had used, the ugly stuffed toad-body full of filth.
The second the thing left her skin, Lauren’s glamour disappeared, but what was left behind was a woman Chess had never seen before. Not Lauren Abrams, at least not the Lauren Abrams Chess thought she knew.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Lauren—the woman—whoever the hell she was—didn’t reply. Terrible tugged her up from the ground by the arms; the woman’s face went pale.
She had dark hair cut like Chess’s, with the same heavy bangs and black dye; Chess assumed it was to assist the glamour. But the eyes meeting hers were blue, not hazel; the features heavier, the lips thicker. An unfamiliar face, but Chess had seen it before. It was the face she’d seen at Maguinness’s place when Lauren touched the fetish. The face she’d seen in the executioner’s kitchen, too.
Would this endless mind-fuck ever end? Only one way to find out, she guessed. She pulled her arm back and punched Lauren with all her strength, the crunching pain in her already aching knuckles making her entire body hum with satisfaction.
Blood flew from Lauren’s mouth. Almost instantly ghosts appeared, swiping at it, trying to grab it and absorb energy from it. Chess’s body turned from warm to icy and back again as parts of them passed through her. She’d long since stopped noticing the burning rush of her tattoos. Her entire focus at that moment was on watching Lauren and on trying to keep her body from flying apart under the heavy magic in the air, on keeping the fetish from touching her skin.
“Tell me what to say. Tell me how to call them off.”
No reply.
“Tell me how to do it. Look! Look at them! You’re losing, you’ve lost. Tell me how to stop it now and we won’t kill you.”
“You—you wouldn’t kill me.”
Chess smiled. Let Lauren see that smile, let her see how truly unpleasant it was. “I might not, but he will.”
Right on cue Terrible nestled his bloody knife against Lauren’s throat. She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Chess drew her fist back—
“Reklatia halkebirto,” Lauren spat. Power blasted from her with the words. Behind Chess, the dogs began to howl.
The sound stirred the ghosts up further, if that were possible. They darted and spun, their mouths opening wider and wider, their movements frantic.
One of them grabbed the fetish. Chess yanked it back, but not fast enough. The fetish, loaded with power, fed the ghost. Translucent glowing arms became solid, glowed brighter. The ghost’s face twisted into a leer, its hand raised, ready to strike. She pulled her own hand back, her vision narrowing until all she saw was the ghost’s fist, calculating when the blow would come and how she could deflect it—
A flash of movement to her left as Terrible knocked Lauren out. He grabbed the fetish before Chess could stop him.
His entire body stiffened. His already too-pale skin went even whiter, as though he were a ghost himself. Chess remembered how it had felt to touch the fetish, the twisting horrible sickness of it—and she’d been prepared for it, had felt its like before and knew how to handle and fight it. What he might be feeling, what might be happening to him, especially with that sigil carved into his chest, making him more vulnerable, she had no idea. She reached for him with her arms and her power, trying to find what was happening to him and absorb it somehow.
He crumpled. Just fell in a heap at her feet. She screamed and dropped to her knees, stuffing the fetish into her makeshift apron. She’d destroy it in a minute.
In a minute—fuck, so much to do. Speak Lauren’s incantation, check on the dogs and the ghosts, on the fight. It felt like they’d been there forever. A lifetime beneath the earth. They would never escape.
Her watch told her it had been barely fifteen minutes when she glanced at it as she tried—unsuccessfully—to pull him into her lap.
Terrible’s head lifted. His dazed eyes found her, stared at her for a second, as if he’d never seen her before in his life, while her heart jerked then flooded with relief when recognition replaced confusion. He glanced away, checked that Lauren was still out, then pulled away from her to get up.
But she hadn’t forgotten her resolution in those dark seconds when she thought her life had ended. And whether this was the right time or not, it was the only time she had; she needed to get back to the Church employees and tell them the incantation, to chase the dogs away, to soothe the ghosts.
Hours of work ahead, if she even survived to do it. Some Lamaru still fought, screams and howls still filled the air, ghosts swirled around them in blazing streaks of pale light. She put her hands on his shoulders and locked his dark eyes with hers, thinking she would very probably throw up in another minute, but if she died without ever having done it she’d never forgive herself:
“Terrible. I love you.”
He blinked. She couldn’t read his eyes, had no idea what he was thinking. Equivocations sat on the tip of her tongue, bottlenecked in her throat in their eagerness to fly out and pretend she hadn’t said it, hadn’t meant it, shit, she felt so stupid—
The City doors exploded in a ball of blue fire and iron.
Baldarel had arrived.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Into that great empty space beneath the earth’s surface the Church placed those angry souls, and calmed them; and peace reigned above and below through the Church’s power.
—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 75
Silence so loud it hurt her ears followed the blast, a heartbeat moment in which everyone—Church, Lamaru, gang members, ghosts—stared at the enormous hole, at the cloud of choking black smoke rising to the ceiling, and at the crowd gathered where the doors used to be.
Baldarel’s power followed the flame a second later, ripping through the City. Chess’s hair blew back from her face, her grip on Terrible tightened as Baldarel’s magic threatened to blow her away.
The psychopomps disintegrated. Just—turned into clouds of black dust and evaporated where they stood, wiped out of existence in the t
ime it took her to realize what was happening.
Baldarel’s voice boomed at them, invaded her body, thundered in her head until she couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t see anything at all. Fuck, that was bad, he was so strong, too strong, what the hell were they going to do, how the hell could they fight a being that powerful—
But then another voice rose, a familiar one, rolling over her and soothing her terrified mind. Elder Griffin, at first alone, then joined by the Grand Elder, by Elder Ramos, Elder Thompson. Tears started in her eyes without her realizing it, and without making the decision to do so, she stood up and joined them as well.
They were reciting the Vakterum Alagarum, a string of power words she’d never been allowed to speak. They were required learning for all Church employees, but like sigils, couldn’t be copied whole without risking a cast, so the Vakterum was not spoken until necessary. She’d written it out for her exams, all forty-five lines of it.
They drowned out Baldarel’s voice, buried it under a thick shower of pure Church magic. Chess’s heart lifted. It couldn’t be that easy, she knew it wouldn’t be, was waiting for the other shoe to drop; but for that one second she just wanted so fucking badly to believe it was possible, that they could win, that Baldarel would be subdued so quickly and easily.
Her own power rose again in her, coming from she didn’t even know where. Certainly she didn’t feel as though she had any left, as if she had anything left at all; the speed was wearing off and she was crashing and she smelled of garbage and puke and Terrible hadn’t replied. She felt as though a fire had ravaged her insides and left only charred lumps where her soul and power used to be.
But still it rose in her, and still their voices rose around her.
At least until Lauren leapt on her from behind and dragged her down again.
Terrible was already moving, his big body a blur as he reached for Lauren. Lauren’s arm tightened around Chess’s neck.
Chess threw herself forward with every bit of strength she could summon and some she couldn’t. Her knees hit the ground with a painful crack, but it worked. Lauren flipped over Chess’s back and landed in front of her.
She was so fucking tired of Lauren suddenly, the bone-deep exhaustion the woman had engendered in her from the very beginning. “I’d ask you to help us stop him but you won’t, will you?”
Shrieks and howls from the doorway interrupted her, and the last vestiges of bright soft hope left her. Baldarel’s family, dozens of them, their bodies low and fast, covering the floor, weapons raised in their mutant fists.
And worse. An army of psychopomps, more of them. Not like the oversized Lamaru hounds; these were larger, their ears stood high off their heads and their noses pointed up, their eyes glowed a bright unholy red and their black fur rippled with terrifying blue fire.
They didn’t howl. Their silence made the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up. Not dogs. Jackals.
They moved like a black ocean over the ghost-littered ground, sucking them up. Eating them. Eating the ghost parts, absorbing them, and with every bit they sucked into themselves they grew brighter, their eyes redder. With every part they absorbed, Baldarel’s power shook the air harder.
The Elders’ voices still sounded, the words of the Vakterum still pounding off the walls, but they were losing. Chess felt them losing, knew Baldarel felt it, too, and he started to glow and rose into the air. Grew above them, flew above them. A wraith.
He was a wraith.
How the fuck had she not sensed it, known what he was? He’d touched her, he’d reached into her head like a bank robber grabbing cash from the till and she hadn’t known, hadn’t recognized the spirit attached to him or seen it. His toad-magic was too strong, the same toad-magic that powered Lauren’s glamour. Transformative magic, the magic of the shifter.
Silhouetted against his green-blue glow were the bodies of the men. The Lamaru had stopped fighting, were screaming and running, staring in confusion. Of course. They recognized Maguinness, thought their enemy had arrived and had no idea why.
Lauren got up, glanced at Chess with a sick, hideous leer of panic. “What is he doing here, was he the one you told?”
“He’s Baldarel, you stupid bitch, he’s known who you were all along.”
Lauren’s face went utterly white, her mouth fell open. Triumph rose in Chess’s breast, and damn did it feel good. “He double-crossed you and you were too—”
The first shouts turned her away just in time to see Baldarel’s family start slicing the Lamaru to shreds.
Lex’s and Terrible’s men reacted immediately. Chess almost smiled to see it, might have smiled if she hadn’t been so frozen with terror. They were there to fight, they were trained to fight—fight they would, and who or what they were killing didn’t matter.
Ghosts rose from the Lamaru, tried to keep fighting but couldn’t. Instead they spun around, heading for Baldarel, swinging at his feet. As Chess watched they disappeared, devoured by Baldarel, their energy fueling him and making him larger still, brighter still. How to defeat that? How the fuck did one destroy a destroyer, something that seemed to have no vulnerability, something neither living nor dead, that treated ghosts like chewable vitamins?
Lauren got up and ran. Chess let her, was glad to be rid of her. She had to find an Elder, any Elder, anyone who would listen to her.
She ran as fast as she could—which wasn’t very fast, with all that magic making the air heavy—back to where the circle had been. On the way she almost stumbled over Bruce Wickman’s body, eyes wide open and staring, blood soaking the front of his robe. Bruce was—had been—a Liaiser. How many more of her fellow employees had died?
She looked around for Terrible, found him cutting a swath through Baldarel’s children with a knife in each hand. Didn’t see Lex. Fear stabbed at her.
The psychopomps were getting closer, heat blasted from them. She didn’t dare glance back. Caught sight of Elder Ramos leaning against a wall with blood soaking his sleeve, his mouth still moving, reciting the Vakterum. She couldn’t feel the spell anymore, couldn’t feel any Church magic in the air at all. Her hand tightened around the handle of her knife.
Her firedish was still burning, the flame almost dead. Quickly she reloaded it. Asafetida, tormentil, ajenjible, and melidia, the most powerful herbs the Church had. Powdered bones of crows and toads. She’d grabbed almost everything in the supply room and she used it now, flinging it into the firedish, trying desperately to summon her own power and force it into the dish as well.
Baldarel might be connected to his body, but he wasn’t in it at that moment; that’s what made him a wraith and not simply a Host.
So where was his body?
Being able to return to it might grant him protection, at least somewhat, but it would limit his power. At that moment he was out of his body, he and whatever that thing was he’d hooked up with, that thing that combined with whatever soul-killing magic he’d worked to enable him to do what he was doing.
She ducked to avoid a fist, struggled to think past the ghosts speeding around her and the shouts and the sound of flesh against flesh, the smell of blood so thick in the air she could taste it. She had to be able to do something, had to be able to—Psychopomps.
Again. He had control over them, was able to somehow make them turn on the ghosts, to remove their careful training to make them harm ghosts instead of aid them, or to make them out of beasts whose instincts were to harm. Most animals weren’t used as psychopomps because they weren’t always effective in ritual, weren’t gentle or familiar, showed up early or late or failed to recognize the passport etched on the ghost’s skin and took the wrong spirit … but anything could be trained to be a psychopomp, in theory. All creatures had the capability to do it.
A heavy body fell into her, knocked her down. One of Lex’s men, locked in battle against a rabbity-looking man with a hole where his nose should have been and no chin. His arms, ending in bright knives clutched in his many-fingered fists, wi
ndmilled and spun, slashing the air, slashing the gang member’s robe. Chess interrupted her thoughts long enough to swing herself out of the way and drive her own knife into the enemy’s back. She caught the brief nod of thanks from Lex’s man and ducked back down to the firedish.
Anything could be a psychopomp. Psychopomps always beat ghosts, always.
To beat Baldarel they had to separate him from his ghost.
And what the fuck, it wasn’t like she had a lot of other options.
“I call on the escorts of the land of the dead!” Her voice barely registered in her ears. Shit, she had so little power left, all she had was adrenaline, and that might keep her awake but it didn’t do shit when it came to powering magic.
But magic was all around her, thick in the air. Baldarel’s magic. Could she …
Again. No other options. She closed her eyes, opened herself up, and started pulling at the energy around her, drawing it in, choking and gagging on it. It tasted like death and rot and sent horrible shivers down her spine, it burned her soul like acid.
But it was power, and when she tried again, her voice rang clear and loud in her ears. “I call on the escorts of the land of the dead! By my power and the power of the Church, by the power of air and earth, I call on you to take this man Baldarel back to his place of silence!”
A few of the beasts near her turned, looked at her. Was it her imagination or had the red light in their eyes faded?
“Escorts, I call you! By my blood and by my power, by my command you will take this man!”
She lifted her knife and sliced her palm over the firedish, barely feeling the pain through everything else. Her blood sizzled onto the burning herbs and raised thick clouds of purple smoke; her Bound blood, blood dedicated to the Church and mixed with the Church’s power.
Holy shit, she hadn’t thought of it before, hadn’t realized. By being Bound she had the Church in her, all of it, the power of the First Elders, the power of tradition, the power of every person in that room and of a magical system so complex and beautiful it brought her to tears.