by Stacia Kane
Then again, maybe she was actually touchier with him than with anyone else—and not in the physical sense. Much as she liked him, the knowledge that there was an undercurrent of business relationship in their sexual relationship … She folded her arms over her chest. That was not a topic she wanted to start on, oh no.
Halfway down the block now, and she felt more eyes glued to her with every step. The windows were empty on both sides of the street, but that didn’t mean people weren’t watching.
“Hey.” He touched her arm to stop her, leaned over to kiss her forehead. “Ain’t mean to get the junters with you, I ain’t. Just on the edgy side this night. You ain’t deserve it.”
She shrugged. What was she supposed to do? Tell him to fuck off and make her way home by herself? Wasn’t like there was any point in fighting with him about it anyway. “No problem.”
It felt like miles, but it was only another few blocks before they made a left and Chess heard the music. Barely audible at first, then louder as they drew closer to it, a bizarre combination of pounding techno and the Pixies.
That it came from their destination she did not doubt. The building rose before them, a hulking shape guarding the street’s termination point. Dozens of windows filled with flickering orange light stared at them, daring them to come closer. More fire rose from the rooftop, glowing columns of it slicing through the black sky. The Nightsedge Market.
“You ready?” Lex muttered.
She nodded, tightening her grip on the knife in her pocket.
What looked from the outside like one huge fire was in fact dozens, overflowing from fire cans or set in the center of stone circles.
Sweat formed on her brow. Her heart pounded in rhythm, “Wave of Mutilation” thundering through her head, making her high. Along the graffiti-covered walls, bodies covered sprung couches, lolling figures with half-closed eyes or couples with half-closed clothing. It stank of smoke and charring meat and sweat, of sour milk and sex, and, beneath those other scents like hot bodies beneath sheets, of Dream and burning keshes and huffer glue.
A clandestine thrill ran up her spine. In the corner a small group of bruised, skinny teenagers huddled around a one-piece hookah, spinning a knife on the floor to see who got the next hit. At the far end of the room a dice game was being played; the prize seemed to be a string of betel nuts and shrunken heads. Beside it was a display of jewelry made from syringes and bones, and farther along was a rack of Dream pipes, ornately carved and gleaming in the firelight.
There was Downside, and then there was this place. It stripped her raw, made her want to sink to the floor and burrow in. It was her own Market plus ten.
Lex tapped her arm, bringing her back to him. “Quit starin, Tulip. Get you noticed, aye?”
“I wasn’t staring.”
“Nay, but you was almost. Follow me.”
Through the crowd they wound their way, passing a naked woman with blue swirls all over her body and a purple-haired guy doing tattoos. Chess stopped when she saw the short man at the end of the row, just past a steaming cauldron of dime-a-mouthful greenish soup. A box at his side towered over him, made of clear glass with iron bars at the corners. Inside the box was a ghost.
At least it looked like a ghost. She couldn’t tell for sure. Her senses were so cranked from the energy around her, from the desire to immolate herself on the pyre of drugs, sex, and violence the entire building represented, she would have had a hard time feeling a real ghost if it had sneaked up behind her and slipped a noose around her neck.
But the thing in the box had the blank, angry stare of a ghost, the unseeing, impersonal hatred the dead took on when out of the City.
Seeing her interest, the man bared his teeth in a greasy smile and pressed a button on the side of the box. The ghost inside leapt, thrashed around for a moment, then subsided. Electric current, forcing the ghost into solidity. Ghost torture on the highest level.
“A gift for the lady,” the man said as the song changed, leering at her and Lex both. “Surely the lady deserves a gift?”
Lex ignored him, kept walking. Chess followed with her head straight but her gaze darting from side to side, taking in everything, wanting to store up as much of the sweet, dangerous sleaze as she could.
Together they started up a narrow, rusty iron staircase bolted to the wall. It rattled with every step and rained flakes of corrosion onto the heads of those beneath them. She didn’t ask him where they were going. It didn’t matter.
The stairs led to a window, and outside the window, back in the freezing air, was the flat roof of the building next door. A man holding two pock-edged hatchets nodded to Lex, waved them both on, and before them sat Hat Trick.
Surprisingly small and dumpy, he seemed to squat on a stool too low for even the tiniest man. Chess couldn’t tell his age; one minute he had the wrinkled visage of the very elderly, the next he appeared smooth and unlined as a young man. Magic of some sort, she figured, but like nothing she’d ever seen before. Everyone bought or tried to make various beauty charms, but most of them were useless—a fact the Church generally didn’t bother to reveal to anyone, knowing as they did that most of the power of that type of magic lay in the belief of the practitioner anyway.
But this one worked, at least to some extent. Chess figured that had she not been who and what she was, Hat Trick would have looked like the young, handsome man whose shadow she caught glimpses of. Certainly she imagined that’s what Lex saw; he had about as much sensitivity to magic as a lump of cement.
“Lex,” he said, in a surprisingly normal and light voice. “And yon witch. Come closer, girl, let we focus on ye.”
Forcing her face into a calm, untroubled expression, she approached, getting close enough to smell the powerful reek of herbs and unwashed body. Shit, he was ripe under those layers of fur. Did he ever leave this rooftop?
His gaze scanned her from head to foot. It felt like being X-rayed. Finally he nodded and looked away, digging around in the sacks by his side until he pulled something out and held it in one outstretched hand. Even in the dim light spilling from the window she saw the deep grime under his nails and around his cuticles, saw the crusty skin of his fingertips.
She took the bag without touching those fingers and opened it. Some sort of herb, it looked like, some … oh.
Hat Trick caught her look. “You see what you holding, then, got it true.”
She nodded.
“Girl brung it me yestereen. Found it, said she. We hears, even down this way, of what happens. Such an odd, figure best to tell Slobag.” He dipped his head in Lex’s direction. “We are not involved, got it true. Where this found all empty now, and no seeing them there before. But we knows what it could mean, so we call.”
Lex nodded. “Ain’t no trouble, Hat Trick. Got no problems here, aye?”
Hat Trick shook his head. “Ye has problems, got it true. Ye just not aware until yon witch tells you.”
Lex glanced at her, his brows raised in his smooth, sharp face. “What’s the tale, Tulip?”
“It’s althea.” Tyson’s place, Tyson and whatever spirit he’d bonded with. Terrible’s comment that the metal box in the alley smelled like Tyson had smelled. Not just ricantha, that wasn’t all of it. Althea too. Ghosts and owls, psychopomps and sex and eyes. It still didn’t all make sense. But this was a piece, a big one, and her head spun.
“Aye, and …?”
“It’s a bonding herb. It traps ghosts, holds them.”
“Ain’t you use them all the time?”
“No. This is a trap. It closes the door between here and the City—I mean, it prevents the soul from attaching to its psychopomp. So it can’t leave.”
“Creates a ghost?”
She nodded. “Creates it and keeps it there. Here. Somewhere, wherever it is they’re doing this.”
For a minute she considered the possibility that this might not be connected to her case. Considered, and discarded it. She had smelled this in the alley.
So what the hell were they doing, the ghost and its Bindmate? And where did they get the stuff, anyway? Althea was highly illegal. The punishment for possession was death. Not that that mattered to the ghost.
They thanked Hat Trick and headed back down the stairs, passing weapons and jewelry dealers, passing a booth where snakes were sold by the foot. She didn’t want to leave. This was a place to explore, a place to spend hours getting lost in. And she didn’t feel like going home yet anyway. In fact, if she was thinking of going anywhere, it was back to Lex’s place with him, where they could dive under the blankets and not come up for air until at least a week had passed.
Wait a minute. Whose thought was that? A week in bed with Lex? Why in the world would she want to do that? She’d be ready to strangle him after two days.
But damned if bed didn’t sound like a fantastic idea just then, while her skin felt extra sensitive and her blood thicker than normal, while her heart thudded and something dark and needy crawled up her spine like a scorpion—
Chess froze, suddenly aware as she hadn’t been before of the crowds around them, strangers all, sinister. Suddenly aware that the arousal she felt wasn’t her own, that it was horribly familiar, and that her heart wasn’t racing along because she was turned on but because she was terrified.
They were here.
A fortune teller was busily setting up a folding table and a murky glass ball nearby. Chess stared at it without really seeing, aware that Lex was talking to her but unable to hear him. Where were they? They were here, she knew it. She felt them, the energy getting stronger by the minute.
For a moment a face appeared in the glass ball’s smudgy surface, long and mournful. Its mouth stretched open in a silent, agonized wail before the image faded.
“What’s troubling, Tulip?”
She shook her head. Her mouth was too dry to speak, not enough air existed in her lungs to force sound from her throat. Crowds, all these people around, all those sweaty, stinking bodies crushed together, touching one another, touching her, all those germs floating in the air, being sucked into unwashed mouths and breathed back out.
She couldn’t seem to hear them. She could barely hear the Avengers song now playing as if from a great distance. “They’re here,” she managed, but the words felt like sandpaper against her dry throat. She swallowed and tried again. “They’re here, Lex, they’re here, they’re right nearby.”
Even here … even here, on the farthest, darkest edge of Downside, where not even Slobag held full sway, they were following her, watching her.
Around her the riotous colors and scents of the Nightsedge Market became a sickening, protean whirlpool, like a bad Sizzle trip. Lex’s hand held hers so tight it hurt, or maybe it was the other way around; probably it was. And all the while that energy pumped into her, through her, so luscious and awful she could barely stand up.
Stand she did, though; she stayed on her feet, forced them to move. They were here somewhere, and she would find them. She had no idea if they knew she was aware of them or not, had no intention of warning them, but if she could find them now, catch them now …
Without thinking she moved through the aisles, backtracking when the energy lessened, turning when it felt stronger. Shit, it was so strong, almost as strong as the pure earth energy she’d channeled back at Chester Airport, stronger than anything she’d ever felt a human conjure. And she followed it because she had to, despite the pure terror growing in her heart with every step, despite the way every step made it harder to breathe through the soupy miasma of sick desire.
Closer now, and closer. Lex stayed at her side, the feel of his body next to hers almost enough to distract her. Almost, but not quite, because she was so close now, so close, they were right nearby, and maybe it was a trap but she had no choice because if it wasn’t, if she found them before they knew she was there—There!
Lex uttered a strangled gasp when she practically yanked his arm out of the socket in her haste.
He was in the doorway. She didn’t know how she knew, she just knew. Knew that the tag end of fabric disappearing around the edge of the rough rectangle cut in the wall belonged to the killer.
She could catch him. She and Lex could catch him. Lex barreled out the doorway, not even pausing to speak. Chess didn’t either.
Their feet slapped on the cobblestones, the only sound on the empty winter-barren street aside from the thumping music of the Market fading behind them. Chess’s breath was loud in her ears, her fingers so tight on the handle of her knife they ached. She ignored it.
Up ahead the killer kept running, glancing back once. He ducked to the right. His coat flapped behind him like a goodbye wave.
Closer. They were gaining on him, chasing him through streets she’d never seen before. They could end this now if they caught him, end all of it.
Her bag slapped and jolted against her thigh. She twisted her left hand around the strap and let it fall from her shoulder, circling her wrist to wrap the strap around it. That could be handy as a weapon too.
Candles in windows cast the occasional patch of pale light on the damp cobbles. Inside those rooms people lived their lives, told stories or did drugs or fucked or whatever they were doing indoors on a freezing night, totally unaware that fifty feet away death raced past their doors.
They followed him left again. The street was empty.
Gone.
But the magic remained, and Chess followed it, trusting it.
The killer hit a trash can as he slipped around a corner; it rolled toward them, the sound of metal against stone like the slow death-grind of worn gears.
Another street. Another. Chess had some idea they were headed northwest—her sense of direction held steady—but she didn’t understand why. Nothing was out here. The buildings grew farther apart, even more dilapidated than the ones on the border of Bump’s and Slobag’s territories. Most weren’t buildings at all, just broken half-walls with empty eyes and gaping mouths where doors used to be, open in silent screams. Defeated giants of buildings, half-buried in the unforgiving cement.
She stumbled on a broken cobble. It was getting too hard to run, her legs didn’t want to move, her chest screamed for air, she could barely see. But she had no choice. She couldn’t have Lex go ahead without her. Even with her knife the thought of being alone on this street … knowing what might hide behind those charred and decaying walls …
Another left, a short block. He was back in sight now, their killer, a moving shadow in the darkness. No streetlights here and the moon was only a sliver above. How far had they come? She didn’t know, but seeing him, knowing they were so close, gave her the strength she needed. She pushed herself, harder than she’d ever pushed herself before, breaking through the pain and finding hatred, burning black in her soul. Hatred was clean. Hatred was strong.
The killer turned right again, maybe thirty feet in front of them. They reached the corner, spun it, raising their knives in unison. So close, they were so close, and the way she felt at that moment she could have torn the fucker apart with her bare hands….
Nothing. Empty street. Blank wall. And ahead of them, the still-swinging door of Triumph City’s principal crematorium.
Chapter Eleven
The body is a vessel for the soul, and nothing more. Once the soul has departed, the body is merely a cast-off shell, and we destroy it as all useless items are destroyed. With fire.
—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 801
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 o
ver 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 …