Possession g-8

by Kat Richardson

  I got all the way to the tavern’s door before I caught a fleeting glimpse of something human-shaped beneath the distinctive aura. I paused and considered trying to catch the tail, but a small band of pub crawlers came noisily around the corner and sent my observer back into deeper shadow. I hoped I’d have another chance to “chat” with it when I came out. For the time being, I was going inside to see what ghostly things might be lurking about in the former mortuary.

  The first room was the classic low-ceilinged pub with dark wood and tiled floors. The tiles might well have been original, since my Grey-adjusted vision saw the room as it must once have been—filled with cold slabs on which the bodies of Seattle’s dead were embalmed. I shuddered and passed through a short doorway to the other half of the bar, where the ceilings were higher and the decor more modern. The paranormal setting, however, was much worse: I’d found the former crematory.

  To me the room was uncomfortably warm and a storm of spirits rushed through it, swirling like ash toward the back of the space, where a storage room or refrigerator now occupied what had been the oven. I cringed and turned aside, stumbling into the edge of the bar that was hidden by my Grey vision on that side.

  The bartender looked up at me with a touch of alarm. “You all right?” he asked.

  “Just dizzy,” I croaked back, fighting to put the sight into literal perspective and shut down the double image of the past and the present.

  “It takes some people that way,” he said.

  I got myself onto a barstool. “What does?”

  “This room. Some people find it uncomfortable. Even frightening.”

  “Former funeral home. Yeah, I suppose they might.”

  “You know the story, then?”

  “No, but I have heard the general outline.”

  “Do you like ghost stories, then?”

  My desire was to say “not particularly” but I would never get any information if I did that, so I said, “Maybe. Are they true stories or just hogwash and hokum?”

  The bartender laughed. “It’s hard to say sometimes, but this being a former funeral home, some of ’em are probably true. They say the original owner used to have hearse races so he could beat the other mortuaries to dead people. Might even be true.”

  “I heard this place was connected to a certain doctor. . . .”

  “Dr. Hazzard? Oh yes. She used to have her patients cremated here and the owner would give her somebody else’s diseased organs to show to the distraught relatives to prove the patient had died of something other than starvation. Quite a racket, eh?”

  Judging from the phantoms of the emaciated dead rushing through the room, it wasn’t just a racket, it was an industry. I nodded, still a bit queasy.

  “And there’s the little girl some people claim to see here. She stays near the back and she likes the dancing. The theory is that she died of influenza and was cremated here. It’s quite likely true. When they were renovating, they found shelves full of tiny urns with no names on ’em, just numbers. Child-sized urns.”

  “Down here?”

  “No. Upstairs. The bar’s owners are turning it into a space for catering parties. Used to be the sales room and the chapel.”

  “What is the attraction of bars in former funerary chapels?” I asked.

  “Not sure. Spitting in the face of death, maybe?”

  Something tinkled and scraped and the bartender spun around just in time for a bottle to launch itself off the shelf behind him and crash to the floor. “Ah, Christ. There they go again.” He glared at the back bar and whispered at the bottles, “Didn’t I tell you you could help yourself so long as you didn’t break anything? Now, was that nice?”

  The mist-shape of a woman oozed out of the racks of liquor and wafted through him to me. She put her incorporeal hand on the bar beside me and then dissolved into the howling storm of other spirits. A small button remained on the bar where her hand had been. As I stared at it, an old-fashioned key dropped onto the bar beside it as if it had fallen from the ceiling. And then the stub of a pencil. Each object was shrouded in trailing blackness. Another phantom woman came toward me from the outside door. She glared at me and her face flickered from fully fleshed to a naked skull. It was the woman who’d lingered in the market office earlier in the day and she exuded malicious intent. All the other ghosts in the room seemed to pull back from her, leaving a clearing around the two of us.

  Her face seemed to melt, as if she, too, were starving into a living skeleton before my eyes. For a moment, what stood before me, clothed in only the raging energy of hunger and fury, was nothing that had ever been human. It glared at me and then seemed to turn that baleful expression inward. Then the moment’s horrible vision faded.

  I felt a burning pain running up my arms where I thought the woman’s ghost had touched me earlier in the day and I winced, looking down to see if some creature had snuck up onto the bar to bite me. But what I saw was blood.

  I gasped and yanked at my sleeve, but the narrow cuff hitched up and stopped me. I got to my feet and whirled, heading back into the short hallway between the two bars to get to the washroom. Inside a narrow stall, I yanked off my jacket and pulled off my shirt, expecting my clothes to be ruined, but the blood was an illusion. The words burning onto my arms were not. “Tribute does not feed the servant. Leave us be, until your time.”

  I’d never been warned off with tricks of this sort before. Most ghosts who wanted me gone were more direct, though the phrase “until your time” made me think they had some plan for me I hadn’t sussed out. I stared at the words and saw more slowly crawling across my belly. I felt each letter forming as if pushed up from inside my skin. The sensation sent me retching to the toilet.

  I got hold of myself eventually and put my shirt back on. I was rinsing my face with cold water when the hostess from the first section of the pub came into the restroom. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “Do you need a cab? I can call one to the hotel at the end of the alley if you do.”

  “No. Thank you. I really am all right. Bad food. Not drink.” I hated maligning the dinner I’d had, but “ghost poisoning” is not the clever explanation you want to offer for barfing in a bar.

  She nodded, but her eyes were narrowed and I was sure she didn’t quite believe me. I washed my face and hands again and killed a few more minutes until I felt steady enough to venture back out. The ghosts had reconvened, so I hoped that meant the intimidating phantasm had gone for the time being. Before I could escape the room, the bartender flagged me down. Reluctantly I walked through the ectoplasmic storm to the bar.

  “Did you want these?” he asked, pointing to the objects on the bar. There were more of them now.

  “No. They fell from the ceiling. They don’t belong to me.” I should have taken them—I was sure the ghosts had left them for that purpose—but I didn’t want to touch them at the moment on the chance that they were . . . hers. “Maybe you could put them somewhere in case the owner comes back for them?”

  He peered at me as if he, too, was gauging my sobriety and then swept them into a small container, which he put beneath the bar. “All right. If you change your mind, though . . .”

  “Yeah. OK,” I said and got out as quickly as I could without appearing to run.

  Outside, the terrifying phantom woman with the melting face was waiting for me, looking even more skeletal and less human than before. “You cannot take them from me,” she said, her voice sighing through the alley on a wind that stank of death. “Tribute is given. It cannot be taken away.”

  I didn’t have a ready reply, though she seemed to expect one, studying me as she was through empty eye sockets with her head cocked slightly sideways. I slid a step backward on the old brick alley floor, my boot soles picking up grit and emitting a slight grinding sound. The revenant lurched toward me and I ducked to spin away. . . .

  Something cold and vicious struck me hard from the left—my blind side, knocking
me into the railing over a sunken courtyard on the far side of the alley. I fetched up hard and tried to dig my feet in, but there was only hard brick and empty air. I felt myself tipping over the railing and I scrabbled to get a grip on it, or loop my arm around it as something scraped at my face and neck.

  I started to scream, but the shout was choked off by an ice-cold hand that clamped over my mouth. But one hand busy meant one less to grapple me with and I hunkered down, pulling out of the remaining grip on my shoulders and wedging myself under the rail. Tucked into the metal bars, I kicked out at the man-shaped thing that attacked me and hit it hard in the knee. It staggered, then turned to take a second swing at me. . . .

  Suddenly it spun and bolted away at inhuman speed—it looked like the vampire-ish thing that had followed me to the alley. A second black shape trailing an aura of blood and pain pursued it up the alley and everything Grey fled ahead of it, leaving a vacant eddy of mist and empty ghostlight for me to stand in.

  I crept to the nearest bench attached to the railing I’d nearly toppled over and sat down, huddling into myself and shivering as if it were midwinter instead of the first week of July. The melting-faced horror was gone, as was the vampire-like man—if it wasn’t the one that had followed me into the market, it was something of the same type.

  I breathed hard, catching my startled breath and calming the instinct that urged me to run far and fast as the darkness that had pursued my assailant returned. . . .

  Some things never leave your memory; this stomach-turning smell and oppressive clot of dark energy were indelible in my mind. Even though he made no sound and my vision was a mess of Grey overlaid on normal like so much static on a television picture, I knew when he stopped next to me and I raised my head. “Hello, Carlos. Thanks for that.”

  It’s a bit difficult to describe the relationship between Carlos and me. We’re friends of a sort, but our history is tangled with unsavory details like death, madness, and vampire politics. I hadn’t seen him—or most of Seattle’s vampires—in quite a while. Not that I minded: Vampires literally turn my stomach and they always have an angle. They’re a frightening lot, but Carlos was much worse than most. He was also a necromancer and he worked as the chief advisor to Seattle’s top vampire—a former client of mine. Carlos and I had done some horrible—if necessary—things together and our secrets bound us in silence and uneasy respect.

  “Thanks are unnecessary. I didn’t catch him.” His quiet voice resonated in my chest.

  “Maybe that’s as good a reason as any to be grateful.” I hated to imagine what Carlos might have in mind for any member of the uncanny who’d offended him. He, after all, was a creature who killed for power.

  “No. It was he I was stalking. Driving him off you was not what I’d had in mind. But Cameron would not like to hear you’d been injured by one of ours—even if that one has gone rogue.”

  I shook off some of my discomfort and studied his face. It wasn’t just his dark hair and beard that made Carlos difficult to read—his expression is subtle and chilly at the best of times. “You have a rogue vampire on the streets?” I asked, taken by surprise—it hadn’t quite looked like a vampire in my Grey sight, but I didn’t know everything about that terrible species. Between them Carlos, Cameron, and his inner circle don’t miss much and it seemed unlikely that they’d have no idea of it if one of their community was turning against them. “How did that slip by?”

  “Not a slip. A theft. My assistant was foolish and fell among evil companions.”

  I raised my eyebrows. It’s hard to imagine companions much more evil than vampires, but given what Quinton had said about his father, I didn’t doubt it was true. I chose to address the less frightening half of the statement. “You have an assistant now? Well, I suppose Cameron did sort of graduate out of that job. . . .” I hadn’t taken time to wonder how that situation had been resolved, but obviously it had. Cameron had, technically, still been Carlos’s protégé when the vampire hierarchy came tumbling down and Cameron stepped into the void.

  “It would be inappropriate for the Prince of the City to stoop and carry for me, but I must still work—work that you know requires considerable labor. Inman was only a dhampir, so I cannot be surprised if his mind has been persuaded against us.”

  I guessed that was the situation Quinton had been warning me about when he said the vampires had a problem. “When did this happen?”

  “A few weeks ago. The half-converted can be difficult to track since they walk the daylight as well as the night.”

  “And you didn’t come to me?”

  “I felt it would not be in our best interest to be seen to rely on your help too frequently, Greywalker. The current cabal is still young in power.”

  Considering I’d helped put that group in power, I was well aware of how sketchy the underpinnings of the regime were and how quickly the situation could have turned into a bloodbath at any hint of weakness.

  “How—?” I started, but Carlos cut me off with a look.

  “This is not the best place for conversation. And I have things I would ask you, too.”

  I was more shaken than I’d thought if I hadn’t the presence of mind to realize that chats with vampires are not best pursued in public places, like famous alleys in front of famous bars. I nodded. “Where would you prefer? I’m on the job, but, to be honest, it’s not going well. . . .”

  He made a humming sound and motioned for me to follow him down the alley, blending into the night as only a vampire can. I came along behind, trusting him not to lead me into danger—which says a lot about our relationship in spite of the fact that Carlos is the most frightening thing I know. He went down the alley and ducked across Stewart Street, heading to a bench in a tiny courtyard behind the Inn at the Market. It was probably a lovely place to sit and talk during the day. At night it was secluded and dark in spite of its proximity to streetlights and busy roads. We sat uncomfortably close, his aura of death and pain lying over me like a blanket of horrors.

  Once we were seated, posing like lovers conversing, I asked, “Why didn’t you come to me when your assistant went missing? You know I would take any case of yours as a priority.”

  “I do, which is why I did not. Cameron suggested it, but he was dissuaded. We cannot be seen to run to you with petty internal problems.”

  “But a rogue vampire is not a petty—”

  He cut me off. “No, but we did not want it known that such a thing had happened. And I prefer to hunt those who defy me myself.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Defy you? That sounds . . . complicated.” I wouldn’t have thought a demi-vampire could do other than obey the vampire to whom he was tied by blood and power. Purlis had managed a very dangerous coup. No wonder Carlos hadn’t wanted word to get out. It also gave me a new perspective on my ambitious and unpleasant nearly in-law.

  “It is,” Carlos said. “Inman was not the first of our number to go missing. But he has been the first to come back.”

  I shook my head, not so much confused as amazed at what I was hearing.

  “He came back to spy,” Carlos explained. “The others may still live, but they remain wherever their captors keep them and we dare not risk an assault to recover them at this time. So we have allowed the situation to lie as it is. So far it has caused little trouble, but that won’t last. With Inman’s return, we face a problem that I had hoped to keep you out of. I would not like to ask you to choose between our faction—which you have protected and supported, however much you dislike our kind—and your mate.”

  I felt exhausted by this skulduggery and closed my eyes, tamping down my anger at Purlis, Quinton, and the whole damned situation.

  Carlos spoke into my protracted silence. “You see the difficulty I faced.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him, steeling myself against the effects of his gaze. “I do, but you shouldn’t have hesitated. Neither of us supports his father’s project. Or his ambitions. He’s been trying t
o drag Quinton in for a year, but it’s a no-go. Quinton won’t do it.”

  “Because of you?”

  “Because his father is a psychotic with an agenda that gets innocent people killed.”

  Carlos nodded. “I see. I’m sorry that we hesitated—that I hesitated to come to you. But we should talk to Cameron. This changes the situation.”

  He rose and expected me to come along, but I held my place, not least because I still felt disoriented and ill from the swift passage of events. “Wait. I have concerns of my own here. I can’t just abandon my inquiry to accommodate Cameron. Time is short on this one.”

  He arched a brow. “You require something in return.”

  “I will, yes.”

  “What will you demand?”

  “A favor—when I’m ready for it.”

  Carlos chuckled, a rumbling that shook my chest and skull. “One to be named at another time. You well know that we owe you many times over.”

  “Can you speak for Cameron in this?”

  “No, but I doubt he’ll balk. Come, we’ll go to him.”

  And this time I didn’t have a choice. I got up and followed Carlos. He went straight to my Land Rover and leaned against the side with a sardonic smile. “I prefer not to walk, as would you.” Which let me know Cameron wasn’t in downtown Seattle as his predecessor had preferred to be. Interesting . . .