by Stacia Kane
“How’d they know you there? They following you? Shit, Chess, you call me, aye? Don’t go off alone.”
She was going off alone, all right. Her head felt stuffed with cotton, her skin electric and so sensitive, the hair on her arm stood up when it brushed the wall beside her. She giggled, then tried to turn it into a cough, which failed when she actually choked. This struck her as even more amusing. It was several minutes and a sip of Terrible’s beer before she was able to speak.
“I didn’t see anyone following me, and I paid attention.”
“They waiting for you. At the library, aye? Knew you’d figure it out, so they just waited.”
“Someone would have noticed them there, I’m sure of it. Nobody’s supposed to be in there after dark, it’s—”
“Aye, but you there, and someone else, too.” He shook his head. “You ain’t count on no rules to save you, Chess. You oughta know that. Don’t know where your head was.”
Her head was floating off somewhere in the distance, bobbing along to the heavy beat of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Her entire body pounded along with it, so it was hard to concentrate, and she knew she’d been stupid and he was right, but the Church was safe, it was the only place in the whole world that had ever been entirely safe, didn’t he know that?
“So’s a lot of people in this one, them tonight and last night, too. Any guesses what they after?”
“No,” she admitted. “Well, yes, but no. The Lamaru… they’re an anti-Church organization. You know, like some of those groups who run protests sometimes?”
He nodded. “Hear on em, aye.”
“Right. But the Lamaru isn’t in it to get money or publicity or whatever reason. They want to overthrow the Church, they’ve been trying for years to take over, but I have no idea why they would want to call a Dreamthief. He’s deadly, you know. Eventually you just…you just stop sleeping out of fear, and you can’t dream anyway when you do sleep, and you get so tired he sucks you into permanent sleep and feeds off you until you die. No dreams…”
“Your brain ain’t recharge itself.” He peered at her a little more closely. “How long since you slept right?”
“I never sleep.”
“You look like you ain’t been sleeping at all, not like usual.”
“I’m fine.” How long had it been, really? Only a few days. And she’d been doing so much speed, a lot more than normal. “I’m fine,” she said again.
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t respond. “So this thing, he attached to that book? He what Slipknot’s soul powering?”
She nodded.
“Bump wanting an update. He—he’s getting on the impatient side, dig. Wanting me to bring you in to him, find out when you plan on clearing all up.”
“Impatient?” She was so high she actually smiled a little. “Did he tell you to lean on me?”
Terrible shrugged, but wouldn’t look at her. There was her answer. “Getting impatient, is all.”
“Yeah, okay. I can see him tomorrow, no problem.”
“Hey, I think I gotta line on somebody maybe tell us something about the ghosts at Chester. You know Old-timer Earl?” When she shook her head he continued. “Been living here since before Chester opened, way back in the when. Word is he might know what’s up. Tomorrow we find him, aye? After seeing Bump? Maybe he know how this connects to yon Dreamthief, maybe he downing them planes?”
“There might not be a connection at all. Could be they just decided it was a good place to do their ritual.”
“Possible he’s brought them ghosts with him, making them stronger or aught like that?”
“It didn’t say anything in Tobin’s Spirit Guide about him being able to control other spirits, but he’d sure upset them, stir them up. You raise a ghost somewhere, you’re going to cause problems with other ghosts that might be around—especially if you do a ritual like that. That life force sitting at the bottom of a well, but connected to him so they can’t get at it…”
“Piss em off right, aye?”
“Yeah. But as for making them stronger, I don’t know. I guess it’s possible. It’s more likely he would…He might be feeding off them. Or—No, that doesn’t make any sense.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I keep feeling like if I had one piece of information, it would lead me to find the other pieces, but I don’t even know what that piece could be or where to look.” She pictured pieces bobbing in the air in front of her, and had to fight not to reach out and try to grab them. That would look weird. She didn’t want him to think she was behaving strangely. What happened to them earlier didn’t seem to be affecting him at all.
Someone brushed past them on their way to the bathroom, breaking her concentration. “What?”
“Where you think we might find that? You got any ideas in the people you work with? Maybe some of them shady? We can check them out.”
“We? Did Bump tell you to shadow me or something? Why are you so into this?”
He shrugged, but his gaze skittered away from her to the floor and his hands burrowed deep into his pockets. “Something different, aye? Solving a mystery.”
“Scary, though,” she said, and the words hurt. “Scarier than anything I’ve ever done.”
“Naw. We keep our heads, we stay safe. No reason for that.”
Chess didn’t know how it happened. It didn’t even make any sense that it would have happened. She lifted her hand to his chest, hard and hot beneath the black fabric of his shirt. She opened her mouth and looked up at him, ready to say something—to thank him, or to ask what time he’d pick her up in the morning, or just to make some sort of joke.
But nothing came out. Nothing came out, because her eyes met his and it felt like he’d looked all the way through her. Nothing came out because her back was slammed against the wall and her arms were wrapped around his neck and his lips were on hers, ruthless and tender and demanding all at once, and now she really was flying, up toward the ceiling, out of the building.
Lust exploded through her body, as if he’d somehow flipped a switch when his hands found the small of her back. Nothing existed in her head but Terrible, his tongue now sliding into her mouth with a skill she never would have expected, his fists gripping the back of her shirt and pulling her even closer to the monolithic wall of his body, as if they could fuse together from the heat and pressure between them.
Her fingers slipped through his hair, down across the nape of his neck, under the collar of his shirt to feel the scarred flesh of his back. With a gasp he lifted her, curving his palms under her thighs, then shifted so one hand supported her behind and the other raised to tangle in her hair. She wrapped her legs around his narrow waist and held on, pressing his pelvis against hers. Damn. Six feet four and everything in proportion, the quote went. It was true in this case. She couldn’t seem to get enough air. She didn’t think she needed air, not when he was holding her, possessing her, making her feel safer than she’d ever felt.
“Chess,” he mumbled. His lips traveled away, down the side of her throat, eliciting buzzing tingles that made her entire body vibrate, and back up to steal her mouth again. “Chessie. Never thought…so pretty…”
The low rumble of his voice made her vibrate more, and she clung to him tighter, certain that if she let go, she would fall, and keep falling all the way through the floor.
This couldn’t be right, this had to be the drugs, or maybe he was making it worse, she didn’t know, but she had some vague idea in her head that if he didn’t agree to take her back to his place in the next minute, she might actually die. His hips rolled against her in a slow, easy rhythm, turning the flames in her body even higher.
He was still mumbling, kissing her collarbones, nibbling at her throat with surprising delicacy, when she summoned the courage to remove one of her hands from his shoulder. His arms bulged beneath her palm as she slid it down, finally wedging it into the miniscule space between them so she could feel the ridge of his erection h
ot through his jeans.
“Terrible,” she managed. “You know how to use this thing?”
He pulled away to meet her gaze, and for a minute he was transformed. Still the same features, the lumpy nose and the jutting brow and the hard, dark eyes, but not ugly anymore. Full of character. Full of strength. She looked at his face but she didn’t see it, not the way she had before. The smile spreading across his features was intimate, sexy. The darkness of his eyes concealed so much more than she’d ever imagined.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “You gonna let me show you?”
She giggled, a single gasping little laugh, as every internal organ she had flipped. “You know, I think I am. Can’t get any crazier, right?”
His smile faltered, just a stutter, then came back. “Guessing not. Come on, let us get outta here.”
He pulled away, setting her back on her unsteady legs. She almost fell.
“Oops.” Her giggle lasted longer this time. “Oops, my legs are kind of weak. D’you think you can give me a minute?”
She looked up, expecting to see him laughing, too, but his eyes narrowed instead. She imagined for a second that they narrowed because all of his extra skin was needed for that incredible bulge in his jeans, and that made her laugh even harder, until she had to stretch out a hand and grab his to keep from tumbling to the floor in a heap.
“Chess.”
“Just a minute, Chess will be back in a minute, okay?” What on earth was so funny? Why couldn’t she stop laughing? It was getting hard to breathe.
“You fucked up, Chess?”
“Who, me? Noooo…” She shook her head, trying to look solemn and honest but unable to wipe the grin off her face.
“What’d you take? What you on?”
The look on his face stopped the giggles, anyway. Had she imagined that glimpse she’d caught of that other Terrible? Because he looked as forbidding now as if he’d been an Elder catching her wasted in a bar trying desperately not to pee herself laughing.
“Nothing, nothing, really. Just, um, a couple of Cepts, and a Valtruin I found, have you ever had one of those? It’s really…wow. I mean…What?”
His hand covered his face, wiping from forehead to chin. “I ain’t believe I’m doing this,” he said, and stepped back. “I’m gonna call somebody, dame I know. You can crash her place, aye?”
“What? Oh, no. Wait. This isn’t why, okay?” Laughter burbled up her throat again, embarrassed and slightly hysterical. She fought it back down. “It’s not that. You just…No, don’t look at me like that. Look like you did before. When you didn’t look like you.”
His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. Oh, shit.
“No, Terrible, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you look different now, I mean…listen.”
She stood up and leaned toward him, putting her hand out to touch his chest, but she knew before her fingers brushed the fabric of his shirt that it was too late.
Terrible stared at her for a long moment, as impassive as a stone effigy, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
“Forget it. Just forget it, okay?” Escape was the only decent option at this point. If a hole had opened in the floor, she would have leapt into it headfirst just to avoid his gaze. He didn’t want her, he pitied her and she disgusted him, and now she’d made him mad, too. She tried to push past him but he caught her with one hand on her arm.
“Hold it. Lemme call, aye? You ain’t just leave like this.”
“I’m not. I have people I can call, too.”
“You ain’t go back to that Church tonight. Not after—”
“I am fully aware of what happened earlier.” The words felt forced out through a wad of cloth. Her face burned with shame. “I am not going back there. Let go of me.”
“Naw, look, I—”
She jerked her arm away, almost falling into the opposite wall. “Get your fucking hand off me!”
That did it. Whatever hint of sympathy he still had for her—amazing he had any at all, and it made her feel even worse—disappeared. He shrugged and turned away. “Whatany you want.”
“Yeah, this is what I want!”
But he’d already disappeared back into the bar, leaving her in the hallway with a bunch of strangers and her own fierce regret.
Chapter Twenty-four
“There is no sin, as the misguided and incorrect old religions would have people believe. There is crime, and there is punishment. There is right and wrong. But these are based on fact, and not belief.”
—The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 56
“Turn here.”
Doyle obeyed, easing the car around the corner. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“Just a friend’s.”
“Is there some reason why you don’t want to tell me? Don’t you think you kind of owe it to me, after you dragged my ass out of bed and all the way down here?”
His voice was like the buzzing of a gnat in her ear. Why had she called him, again? She should have just walked. “You didn’t want to give me a ride, you should have said no.”
“And left you stranded alone in a bad part of town. I couldn’t do that.”
“Then don’t bitch about it.” Chess folded her arms tighter around herself and stared out the window. Rain blurred the red spots of traffic lights, oddly festive against the blackness of the empty street. She could almost imagine she was in a spaceship, or a boat, gliding smoothly across a calm glassy sea. All alone. Just the way she wanted to be.
She could almost imagine it, because Doyle wouldn’t stop talking. “I’m not some errand boy, you know. I don’t appreciate being treated like one.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“No, what is your problem, Chessie? You practically leapt on me and dragged me into bed with you, then you treated me like a leper. You don’t return my calls, then you wake me up in the middle of the night and beg me to come down here.”
“You didn’t have to—”
“Don’t give me that, you sounded like you were about to burst into tears on the phone, what was I supposed to do? And you look like damn, seriously. Like you haven’t slept in—Wait a minute.” The car, already crawling along at a speed that would have made a sober Chess nervous about being carjacked, slowed down even more. “Have you seen him? The nightmare man?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told you before.”
“You have to come with me to talk to the Grand Elder. We have to tell him what’s going on.”
“I’m not talking to anyone about anything.” Shit. How many people had he gone around discussing this with? If the Lamaru were after her because of what she knew, how much danger was Doyle in, Doyle who could not keep his mouth shut to save his life? Unless—
No. No, that wasn’t possible. He couldn’t have done it.
“You never talk to anyone about anything. I’ve been trying for weeks to get you to and you won’t. You won’t talk to me, you don’t talk to anyone else, you just hang around here in your precious ghetto with all these fucking crazy people who talk like they’ve never heard a proper word spoken in their lives, like that big guy who looks like somebody hit him with a brick full of stupid, and—”
“You’re such a fucking snob, Doyle, you know that?” The words tumbled from her mouth too fast, almost hurling themselves across the space between them. Doyle was a snob, an insufferable snob, and she couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t seen it before. That damn Valtruin was showing her a new side to everyone, wasn’t it? “You don’t know anything about him, he’s not stupid, and just because you can trace your ancestors and your—”
“Hey, at least I don’t make a habit of inviting diseased-looking homeless kids back to my place or spend all my time at that creepy market.”
Brain. Holy fuck, she’d forgotten about Brain, hadn’t she? She hadn’t even thought to look for him today, hadn’t even asked Terrible if he’d seen him.
Brain had left when Doyle showed up. Brain had been
about to tell her something—to tell her what he’d seen at the airport—when Doyle arrived, at the spur of the moment, with breakfast. And he’d looked scared, hadn’t he? Trying to picture it in her mind now, she thought Brain’s eyes had been wide, his upper lip damp with sweat.
He’d seen Doyle at the airport. It had to be. Doyle had tattoos like hers. Doyle knew where she lived, knew she’d been in contact with the amulet—he’d picked the fucking worms out of her palm.
Doyle would have known she was investigating Ereshdiran, that she would visit the library after hours to do that research. No, he wasn’t trapped in the elevator, but she didn’t know that she’d trapped the man following her.
Had it been so airless in the car a minute ago, so hot?
Doyle? Doyle in the Lamaru? Doyle had performed a ritual murder?
Doyle had touched her, kissed her, taken her to his bed. For a moment the shadows inside the car looked like blood trails smeared over her skin. She hadn’t even suspected, hadn’t known. She’d called him to drive her thinking he was at least a friend, a decent person regardless of their issues, and she’d been so wrong. So wrong it made her throat close up and her stomach hurt.
“Okay, here it is,” she said, trying to keep her voice smooth. “You can just drop me off here.”
He hit the brakes so hard Chess lurched forward and almost hit the dash, her strained nerves twanging with fear. “What, that’s it? Just drop you off, never mind that I’m trying to talk to you, never mind that you owe me something after this, I’m just a fucking chauffeur to you. Is that it? Do you have any idea how many girls would kill to have me bring them breakfast? How many of the girls we work with still call me?”
“No, no, I just, I only needed a ride, and this is where I need to get out, okay?” The rainswept street outside was empty of everything but shadows. Not the most appealing place to be outside alone, but if she was right about Doyle, she’d happily take her chances. She wanted to get out, to get away, she had to.