I appreciate how blatant they are about death around here. Got a body that needs to be hauled somewhere? Here, put it in the vehicle that looks like the Grim Reaper’s station wagon.
“Hold on.” Runner hits the brakes, and we come to an abrupt stop.
“What? What’s wrong?” I don’t see a threat, no Lunatics lurking in alley shadows or demons perched on rooftops waiting to descend upon us.
He points up through the windshield. “Red light.”
“Oh,” is all I can manage. In all the Counterfeit mayhem I’d been a part of tonight, I guess I’d stopped assuming that most rules applied to the city, and to us.
“Yeah, it’s a tricky adjustment,” Runner concedes. “And you’re new. Like, new.”
“How can you tell?” I say. It bothers me more than I want to admit that my rookie status apparently shines like a beacon to the other supernaturals I encounter.
“I can’t explain it. It’s just a… a sense that you get when you’re around someone who hasn’t been part of this place for as long as the rest of us.” He glances up. Still red. “How many times has someone tried to kill you since you’ve been a Counterfeit? I mean, assassination attempts that I haven’t been present for?”
“So that’s not just me being paranoid?” In my line of work I’d grown accustomed to looking out for danger, senses heightened and alert for any attack, but running for my life every time I stepped out into the city seemed like overkill, even for me.
“No. Just like when you were human, there are bad guys and good guys. Or, bad guys and guys who aren’t actively out to kill you. I mean, if you end up a Counterfeit, you were either born with bad blood or you made bad choices. The bad ones see it on you, smell it on you, your newness, and they see fresh meat. It fades after a while, and then you won’t stand out from the rest of us. Or,” he says with a shrug, “with the destruction that seems to follow you, maybe you will.”
“I don’t plan on being here long enough for it to matter,” I say, and above us, the light flips to green. Runner hits the gas and merges aggressively.
He glances over at me, and there is pure confusion on his face. “You can’t possibly mean you want to go back to Pandemonium.”
“No, not Pandemonium.”
“But, your mark.” He waves his wrist in the air. “If you’re not here with the heathens, you’re there with the sinners. Like, the bad ones.”
“I was supposed to be there,” I admit, “but Lucifer asked me to do something for Him. You had the bad luck to be assigned to carting me around tonight while I get it done. Sorry about your car, by the way.”
He waves me off. “Not the first time.”
“Once I deliver the package to Lucifer, he’s going to send me back to my old life. Alive,” I quickly add. “Not dead in a casket.”
Runner snorts. When I don’t laugh, he does a double take. “Wait, what? No.”
“Yes.”
“No, I mean, I’m not saying that because I don’t believe that’s what he told you. I’m saying that because he lied.”
“I will complete my mission, and I will be paid by the terms of our bargain.” There’s an edge to my voice, and though I’m sure it sounds like anger, it’s the fear that’s roiling in my gut.
Runner apparently doesn’t have any response to that, and just when I’m sure we’re going to spend the rest of the night in silence, he says, “Is this about David?”
At the sound of his name, my entire body tenses and I whip around in my seat. “What do you know about David?”
“Nothing! Nothing,” he says, inching away from me and my intensity. “Just his name. You said it when you were unconscious back at the Skull.”
I watch him for a long moment, determining whether he’s telling me the full truth. “Really, Gray. I have no reason to lie to you. In fact, I’m probably your only friend here. I stuck around after you almost got me killed!”
He’s right. “Why are you still here?”
“I got the call. While I’m wandering this plane, I might as well help you wander too, right?” He answers too quickly. Nobody would stick around after dodging a hail of bullets and suffering a major car crash. He should’ve let me die in the street.
Either way, David is not a subject I want to discuss further. It hurts too much, and I can’t have any distractions. “You’re not a demon. Is it rude to ask what you are?”
He barks out a laugh. “No. Once you’re here for a while you’ll be able to tell who’s who and what’s what…I mean, not that you’ll be here for a while because you’ve got plans that Lucifer definitely will not try to manipulate or twist in his favor.” He clears his throat. “I’m a spirit. The common term is Phantom around here.”
“Like a ghost?”
“Like a ghost,” he echoes. His voice quiets when he says it, and he stares at the road and traffic ahead in a way that makes it clear that he’s trying to think about that, and only that.
“Where’d you go?” I ask, and when he looks over at me I can see a shimmering in his eyes as he tries to swallow back tears. “You were here, and now you’re not.” I tap my temple.
He doesn’t want to tell me. I watch him wage an internal war about what he’s going to divulge. “Ah, let’s just say I have some unfinished business.” He forces a chuckle and pulls himself back from the brink of whatever despair he was teetering on. “How clichéd, right? A ghost with unfinished business?”
“So is this Limbo?” I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it would make perfect sense.
“I don’t know. Possibly. There are creatures running around Counterfeit City that don’t fit into any religion that I’m aware of. But that doesn’t mean much. I wasn’t exactly a scholar when I was alive and it’s not like you get a handbook when you get dropped here. Or wake up here. Or crawl out of the dirt here.”
We’re on the outskirts of the city now, and the streetlights are fewer and far between. The shadows darker and deeper. I’m grateful to be inside a moving vehicle instead of running out in the open from whatever might decide to chase me.
’Oh!” I jump at Runner’s exclamation, and he glances over at me with a mischievous glint in his eye. “Who taught you what you know about the Counterfeit City?”
“Nicodemus,” I say, “but it wasn’t much. I was in a hurry.”
“Then you probably don’t know that the Counterfeit City isn’t just this city.”
Again, another thing I hadn’t even considered. I shake my head.
“Counterfeit is more like a blanket term,” he says and turns down a deserted alley in a part of the city I’m not familiar with. The buildings are older, more decrepit, and from what I can tell the streetlights are no longer electric. They’re gas lamps. “We’re in Ash City now, obviously, but the Counterfeit City is the underworld that runs beneath the human realm. Same buildings and storefronts for the most part, but populated with creatures like us and dotted with hidden shops and things. Like, a human could never find Mina’s,” he says and waves his hand as if the idea were absurd.
“We’re not the only Counterfeit city,” I say, the idea making so much sense that I don’t know why I didn’t consider it before.
“All major cities have a Counterfeit component. A lot of towns, too. And forests. I mean, you can’t wander into a forest and not run into at least one pack of fairies.” He goes quiet, thinking for a moment, and then says, “You know what? Now that I think of it, there are probably very few places on the planet that aren’t Counterfeit.”
The paved street gives way to hard-packed earth, and the hearse rumbles down a dirt road with deep tire ruts. Ahead, a wrought iron fence cuts across a grassy area that seems to stretch for miles.
Beyond the fence, ancient, crumbling tombstones mark the graves of what must be lesser Counterfeits. Darkened mausoleums and crypts hold the wealthy and powerful. Stone angels with broken wings hold watch over the dead.
We pull to a stop at the edge of the fence and I’m already halfway out the door,
but Runner catches my arm and holds me fast.
“The gate,” he says and nods toward the windshield.
One of the iron gates sits ajar. A broken chain hangs from the bars and the gate’s lock glows a faint, icy blue.
“These gates are always closed,” he says and leans forward to get a better look at our surroundings. “Always. And I don’t see Baron.”
“He normally keeps watch? He’s the one I have to see.”
“He’s the guardian of the cemetery and the keeper of the relics. Baron makes sure the living stay out and the dead stay in.” In the dashboard light, I can see the worry on his face. “Did nobody tell you any of this?”
“Like I said, I was in a hurry.”
A flash of light deep inside the cemetery boundary cuts through the darkness and illuminates the cab.
“Stay here,” I say, and throw open the passenger side door.
“Twist my arm,” he calls after me. “Only fools cross Baron.”
And as I slam the door shut I hear him mutter, “Gods dammit.”
17
The moment I leave the hearse, Runner turns on the radio and begins flipping through stations like a six-year-old on a sugar high.
…The Magic Exchange hit a six-month low today…
Static
…So come on in today. Nobody beats our prices on O negative…
Static.
…traffic is back to normal after an accident outside Skull Number 26 earlier tonight…
The music and words fade away as I leave him behind and approach the Eternal Cemetery. Ahead, the blue glow on the lock casts an eerie glow on the entrance to the graveyard. The ends of the severed chain ping against the metal of the gates, which are open just enough to let me slide through without grazing them.
The graves on the outskirts are newer, their epitaphs still legible. The deeper I go, the older they get, becoming darkened and weathered and cracked. Gnarled roots from nearby trees have upended some of them, and silent, weeping angels on marble pedestals mourn the destruction. A Counterfeit could be hiding behind any one of them. I pull my diamond dagger and keep it at the ready.
I come over a gently rolling hill to find what can only be the crown jewel of the Eternal Cemetery: a massive mausoleum seemingly carved from one solid slab of marble. It’s dotted with carvings and statues and looks like a tomb and fortress rolled into one. It is jaw-droppingly beautiful.
A bright light flashes once from inside, but once is all I need to see that there is something wrong out here.
Dark shapes litter the ground between me and my destination. They are silent and still, but I approach the one closest to me cautiously all the same. The angles of what I’m looking at don’t make sense, and I crouch down to get a better look. All at once the picture snaps into place, and I realize that I’m looking at the corpse of what I can only guess is a fairy. He is on his stomach, his inhumanly gorgeous face turned to me at a severe angle, and his pointed ear is tipped in blood. The shapes I couldn’t make sense of are the wings that jut from his back. One is snapped at a horrible angle.
Moving past him, I find two dead vampires. Or Feeders, Nico called them. One has a thick wooden stake through his chest and a second through his throat, pinning him to the ground. The other is sprawled on her back. Her small fangs drip blood into the empty space where her jaw used to be. Even in death, she is mesmerizing.
An angry screech cuts through the silence, ripping my attention away from the carnage around me.
There is no threat out here. Only dead Counterfeits.
My quarry is inside.
Placing my dagger back in its sheath, I creep toward the mausoleum. As with the gate, the door here is slightly ajar. The bright flashes have stopped and the only light from inside is a warm, flickering glow. Just across the threshold, a massive open space is dotted with short, stubby candles. Torches in metal sconces line the walls, and thirty feet ahead, rows of free-standing shelves stretch back into the darkness, holding crates and boxes of varying size.
At the end of one of the rows, a man sits on a crate with one knee drawn up to his chest and a cigar wedged between his index and middle finger. The smoke curls around his face, framing the painted white slashes on his dark cheeks and the kohl black that hollows out his eye sockets. He wears a vest, suspenders, and spats, and a top hat sits on his head at an angle. It can only be the Baron.
He’s watching the fight in front of him with unmitigated amusement.
A Feeder, his eyes glowing red, is fighting a demon, and from the looks of it, the battle has been long and brutal.
Quick as a blink, the Feeder attacks the demon, knocking her to her back. They roll on the smooth marble floor, grunting and struggling, red blood spattering right next to black. They show no mercy.
I slip inside when the action is at its most frantic and duck behind a stack of crates near the door.
“This is more entertainment then I’ve seen in a century, children,” the Baron says, and there is an island lilt to his deep, soothing voice. A chuckle bubbles up and spills out from deep within him as if he’s never been so entertained.
Keeping to the shadows, I try to get a better glimpse of the place. I’m not here to watch a fight. I’m here to grab the Dagger. The two Counterfeits locked in battle have other plans, though, and the Feeder rolls the demon onto her back just ahead of me, blocking a good chunk of my view. The Feeder reaches down and grabs a fistful of hair, lifting the demons head up off the ground and into the light.
I forget the Dagger. I forget the Baron. I forget the Counterfeit City.
The only thing I see is the demon with the scar running along her jaw.
Kira.
A red haze falls over my vision, and to my surprise, I can feel my nails lengthening into claws. That will be useful.
Of course Lilah sent her. Even with something that supposedly means so much, the last piece of her puzzle, Lilah would never stoop to doing her own work. With me gone, Kira would’ve been a natural choice. We’d always traded off on assignments. Until she killed me. Until she killed David.
The Feeder slams Kira’s head back onto the hard floor, but I’ve been in that position before and that won’t be enough to stop that demon. Sure enough, Kira twists and flips the Feeder off of her, slashing her claws out and driving them into the Feeder’s chest.
One moment, the battle was most certainly won by the Feeder.
The next, the Feeder’s heart is in Kira’s palm.
The vampire coughs. Sputters. He drops to his knees as a river of blood flows down his shirt and onto the floor, which is already stained dark with what must be the blood of decades of fights that came before.
Baron slides off of the crate and saunters toward Kira, taking a long drag off of his cigar. He blows the smoke right at her and says, “Well done, you. Looks like I’ve got another grave to dig. What’d you leave me out there?” He gestures toward the door and the bodies littering the lawn just outside. “About a dozen? Long night ahead of me, no?”
Kira swipes blood from her face with the sleeve of her jacket. “Where is the Dagger?”
He holds out his arms, gesturing to the rows of crates that stretch back into the depths of the mausoleum. “You’re welcome to look. We’ve got all night.”
“Do you know what Lilah will do to you if you don’t hand it over?”
“Lilah has never done anything herself. Why would she, when she has good little demons like you?” He takes another puff on his cigar. Blows a smoke ring. “The day Lilah comes to the cimitière is the day I eat my cigar.”
I can’t take it anymore. I can’t watch her talk, and move, and live, knowing that David cannot do the same. Not caring if they see me, I step out from behind the crates and stalk past the dead vampire. The room disappears around me. The only thing I see is Kira.
The Baron glances past her, right at me, his eyes widening with delight. “A new contender?”
Kira spins just as I duck down, and I drive my shoulder into h
er chest, sending us both crashing to the floor.
I could’ve pulled a dagger. I could’ve flung it into her windpipe and strolled out of here, but that is better than she deserves. As Lucifer said, Lilah and the Dagger are the mission, but if I happen to send him the person who killed me, well, what’s one more sinner in Pandemonium?
We slam into the far wall and the torch above us shakes in its sconce. I pin her down, looming over her, and see the moment where she realizes just who exactly has attacked her. Her eyes light up.
“I’ll make sure you stay down this time,” she hisses and swipes her claws across my face.
I grab her jacket, lifting her up off the floor and slamming her back down with a screech of rage. I don’t recognize this recklessness in myself. I pride myself on killing with cool, ruthless efficiency, but the fire that burns within me now won’t allow for that. Pain drives me, and I need to make her hurt as badly as I do.
She bucks and twists and we roll over the floor. “He offered up his life to me,” she grunts as she kicks me back and scrambles up to standing, “as long as I promised to let you live.”
I get to my feet just as she pulls a small square of paper from her pocket and flicks it toward me. It sails through the air and lands at my feet.
It’s my photo of the bungalow. The place David and I were going to escape to. We were going to be safe.
“A souvenir from my favorite kill,” Kira says and spits on the ground. “Unfortunate that your happily ever after lasted less than a day.”
The memory sucks the air from my lungs and hollows me out inside.
“I’ll take a new trophy tonight,” she continues. “Maybe your lying tongue.”
Before she’s done speaking, I’ve grabbed a packet of powder that Nico gave me from the inside pocket of my jacket and I fling it into her face. The black granules sizzle and hiss as they hit her and she lets out an inhuman screech of pain. While she’s temporarily blinded, I pull the diamond dagger and lunge toward her, slicing down in a wicked arc. She dodges and plants her boot in my back, sending me sprawling toward Baron. I land in a puff of dust at his feet. My blade goes skittering along the floor.
The Counterfeit City Page 9