City of Ghosts

by Stacia Kane

  Fingers tucked into the waistband of her jeans yanked her back into the car. Her head hit the top of the door with a painful thud. Vanhelm’s car narrowly missed Lauren’s; Lauren slammed on the brakes, Vanhelm jumped ahead, and Chess just managed to avoid throwing up.

  Erik swerved to the right, cutting across all four lanes. Heading for the off-ramp at Mercer. Downside. Damn, they’d covered those miles fast. Time flew when she was certain she was going to die.

  She’d been right about his destination, at least. And they’d be able to step back a little, now they could track his car.

  Which, it occurred to her suddenly, was a little useless. Sure, they could track the car, and that might be handy, but once he got out of it he’d be lost. Untraceable. Just another no-hoper hunting oblivion on the Downside streets—just like her.

  Lauren wasn’t about to let her prey go; she twisted the wheel and followed, leaving screeching tires and honking horns in her wake.

  Red lights barred the end of the road, but Erik wasn’t much of a law-abider. He fishtailed into the intersection and headed right, Lauren dogging behind.

  They tore across Mercer at speeds that made Chess, even as used as she was to Terrible’s lead foot, cower in her seat. Lauren’s car was a hell of a lot smaller and less solid, and Lauren was a good driver but not as good as he was. Her hand started to ache; she’d been clutching the tracking device hard enough to form grooves in her palm. The thing should have gone back into Lauren’s bag, but just in case … she slipped the strap around her wrist, kept the sensors in her palm. Erik was a slippery son of a bitch, but if she got close enough she might have a chance to plant another one on him.

  If her trigger-happy pal there didn’t just shoot the guy. She still felt Lauren’s hands on her bare stomach, reaching for the gun as Terrible strode away.

  Erik made a sudden left down an alley; they emerged onto Ace just in time to see him leap out of the moving car and start running.

  The sedan bumped into a wall and bounced off. Lauren wasn’t as careless with her coupe. The tires squealed so loud that Chess barely heard Lauren cursing.

  She shoved her door open before the car stopped moving and thrust herself out of it. Not the smartest move in the world—ow, her knee—but effective enough. She caught sight of the heel of Erik’s shoe disappearing around a corner and pushed off running as hard as she could.

  Without thinking she followed him, ignoring the alarm ringing in the back of her head. She didn’t know the neighborhood and he probably did. That was a stupid situation to put herself into, even with Lauren right behind her. Or maybe especially with Lauren right behind her. All she knew was that sweat poured down her face and the damned tracker kept bouncing on its strap and throwing her off her stride; her knee was killing her, her head and bitten arm still hurt, her bag slapped her thigh, and the sunlight disappeared as they moved into another alley, narrower than the first.

  He stumbled on a trash can and hit the pavement. Chess leapt on him, already congratulating herself for keeping the sensor in her hand. The slap of it against his back was immeasurably satisfying.

  Satisfaction that didn’t last. Lauren yelled something, probably “Freeze!” or some other dramatic TV-Squad sort of dialogue, but Vanhelm brought his heel up with savage speed and kicked Chess in her already sore knee.

  “Fucking hell!” He leapt up and took off again before she’d even finished the obscenity. Oh, it was so tempting just to lie there on the concrete, even with dirty water seeping through her jeans. Let Lauren do it. Just go home. This wasn’t her neighborhood, but it wasn’t that far, she could—

  Gunshots. Shit, Lauren. Was the woman trying to rack up a kill count, or was she just reckless or stupid? Considering they had no idea where Vanhelm was leading them—or to whom—wasting bullets was not a great idea.

  She was up and running again before the shots stopped echoing. Wood crashed. Lauren ducked through a hole in a wall. Chess followed, and almost ran into her.

  Dead end. The room they stood in measured about fifteen by fifteen; just a blank square, empty save for a couple of rickety shelves. They wasted a minute banging on the walls, checking for hollow spaces or hidden doors, and found none.

  “Are you sure he turned in here?” Chess stomped her foot, just in case, but the floor sounded and felt solid enough.

  “It looked like he did. He just … disappeared into the wall. Damn it!”

  “Maybe there’s another—”

  They heard the engine roar into life at the same time, tore out of the room in time to see the rear end of Vanhelm’s sedan burn rubber out of the alley.

  He’d slashed Lauren’s tires before he left.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Laws are made for our safety and should be followed. Don’t think that just because you want to do something, you should. Leave complicated magic to the Church.

  —You Can Do This! A Guide for Beginners,

  by Molly Brooks-Cahill

  At least working with the Grand Elder’s daughter had one advantage. A gang of low-level Church employees from the Maintenance Department showed up within about half an hour to replace the slashed tires. Chess tried not to look at the loose flaps of rubber as the tires collapsed in pitiful heaps by the side of the car, their shape gone. Useless and empty.

  And fast as those Maintenance employees were, it was still almost eight by the time they were done. Lauren’s impatience revealed itself more clearly by the minute through jiggling, watch checking, pacing, and casting ever more annoyed looks at Chess as she leaned against a wall and smoked.

  Lauren could be annoyed all she fucking wanted. Chess just wished she’d do it somewhere else. Lauren’s irritation assaulted her, rubbing up and down her spine and making her palms tingle like early withdrawals.

  Fuck, that might actually be early withdrawals, now that she thought about it. Not quite five hours … a little early. But she’d been stepping on it for a while, hadn’t she? More pills, more often …

  Blah. Something to worry about later. At the moment the issue of actually taking the pills was far more important.

  As was the tracker in her hand. She’d been fiddling with it while they waited, trying to figure out how to zero in on one of the sensors she’d placed on Vanhelm and not the handful still sitting in Lauren’s bag. Tricky little bastard. Each sensor seemed to have a code, but the buttons were tiny and stiff, the menu impossible to decipher in the dark.

  She waited for Lauren to snatch it from her hands again—and fail to make it work again—but she didn’t. Instead she watched while Chess hit button after button.

  The machine lit up. Chess almost dropped her smoke.

  A map grid appeared on the screen, a map grid with a single flashing green light. Carefully Chess turned the little knob next to the screen. It rewarded her by zooming in.

  Was this the track she’d placed on his car, or on his shirt? He knew about the one on his car—at least, Chess assumed he did. Whether he was aware of the one on his shirt she had no idea.

  And it didn’t matter anyway, because the screen zoomed in and Chess read the address, and her heart slammed into her throat. “Lauren!”

  “You got something?”

  Her triumphant grin refused to hide as she showed Lauren the screen. “He’s at the slaughterhouse.”

  Feeling triumphant about being right and feeling glad about being right were two different things. On the one hand, Chess was thrilled, in a take-that-bitch sort of way. On the other …

  On the other, her palms still buzzed and dizziness crept around the edges of her mind, as she crouched in the bushes beside the darkened slaughterhouse, a hulking beast with only a sliver of moon to illuminate it. If she never crouched in another bush it would be too soon.

  “There has to be a back door,” she whispered to Lauren. Maybe she could get Lauren to go one way while she went another. All she needed was a minute. Just one, with Lauren not around, so she could crack her pillbox.

  To her surp
rise, Lauren nodded. “Let’s go around the side. I think I saw a door there earlier.”

  Fuck. What else could she do but nod and follow Lauren through the shrubbery to the granite corner of the building? Church protocol for Squad members meant working in teams and staying together. Hell, Church protocol for Debunkers on the very rare occasions they worked together said the same. Once inside, getting away from Lauren would be extremely difficult.

  And extremely necessary. The itching wasn’t bad yet, but it distracted her, and she didn’t need any distractions. Not when she faced at least one Lamaru and probably more.

  Lauren stood too close to her while she eased her picks in and out of the lock. Chess’s shoulders twitched. The only person whose breath she didn’t mind feeling on her neck was … well, enough about that.

  The lock gave with a tiny click. Chess started to grab the knob, thought better of it, and squeezed her lube syringe over the hinges. Too late, probably, but worth a shot anyway. Lauren twisted the knob, and they slipped into the darkened slaughterhouse.

  It stank. They stood in some sort of pen; Chess’s boots scuffed through a thin layer of damp ammoniac straw and warm animal bodies blocked her way, surrounded her. She had to force her lungs to keep working; claustrophobia and cow shit didn’t really aid her breathing, wouldn’t have even if her chest hadn’t started tightening for other reasons.

  For a second she stood in total darkness before her eyes adjusted. It was a pen. The cows slept all around her, and Lauren’s dainty hand pinched her own dainty nose. When she saw Chess looking at her she gestured forward. Right. They wouldn’t find anything here. Even if there was something here they probably wouldn’t find it. Chess was committed to her job and all, but she was not going to start playing around in manure just in case some Lamaru had dropped something. Not unless it became absolutely necessary.

  She dug a pair of latex gloves from her bag—her hand brushed her pillbox, oh, damn, she just needed a minute alone—and slipped them on. Again, just in case. If manure squeezing did end up being on the menu, she’d be prepared.

  Besides, with the Lamaru in there, who knew what else she might end up touching?

  And they were there all right. She could feel them. Their darkness crawled over her skin, rolled up her spine to buzz in her head. The cows around her looked like black monsters, threatening her, as her mind swam and her body tingled.

  She needed to find the Lamaru. She needed her pills.

  Together she and Lauren wound their way among the sleeping cows like worms through an intestine. Chess concentrated on breathing and not slipping, on placing one careful foot in front of the other and steadying herself before the next step.

  Voices murmured just out of range. Voices and soft whimpers. Dogs.

  Chess moved faster, ducking around the cows. She didn’t see a door, but there had to be one. With every step the voices grew louder. She glanced at Lauren, whose face tilted up. Listening. Good.

  Finally they hit a door. Locked. Chess grabbed her picks, only to stop when Lauren touched her arm. What now?

  Lauren leaned in close again, too close. “Cesaria, you were right.”

  “What?”

  “You were right. About the psychopomps. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

  How was she supposed to respond to that? What did it say about her that she couldn’t even trust Lauren’s apology? It sounded sincere enough. “Yeah, that’s okay.”

  Lauren hadn’t let go of her arm; now she gave it a little squeeze and dropped her hand. “Thanks.”

  Okay, whatever. Not really the time to worry about Lauren’s motives, and she couldn’t really bring herself to care that much anyway. So she picked the lock by feel and they found themselves in another space, empty save for winding steel walls stretching halfway to the ceiling. The chutes. The trails the animals walked down to their deaths.

  Only the faintest moonlight shone on them through the windows high on the walls. They stood gleaming in it, silent and cold and watchful.

  Animals entered at one end, were drawn blindly from one sharp turn to the next, not knowing where they were going or that they’d been led into a death trap from which they’d never escape. From which they’d never had a chance of escaping from the moment they set foot in the building, made the commitment to take those first steps forward.

  Chess shivered.

  The room ended in a grille, the kind stores pulled over their windows at closing time. Beyond that were flames, their glow making Chess and Lauren duck.

  The Lamaru were there. She saw their black forms against the flames, heard their voices rising louder than before. Heard the dogs whine and smelled their fear acid-sharp in the still air. Smelled their blood. Their urgency infected her, cranked her heart.

  So did the urgency of her body’s demands. If she didn’t find a little privacy soon, she’d have a real problem. Fighting the Lamaru would require all her strength, and she couldn’t give it in this condition, not when her brow was damp and her palms were starting to burn.

  They had two choices. The grille didn’t reach the floor; it descended just over halfway down, ending right above Chess’s knees. They could slide under.

  But another door stood at the far end, with one of those staircase symbols of a stick person walking down beside it.

  “There’s that walkway upstairs,” Chess whispered. “We could see what they’re doing. We’ll split up, you go to the left and I’ll go right.”

  Even in the dark she saw Lauren’s nostrils flare with annoyance, but who gave a fuck. The horrible thick energy of Lamaru magic, the slithery whisper of psychopomp magic, choked her, and she just wanted it to stop. Their chant had a rhythm, a heavy beat, that cut into her soul and made her blood pump in time.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. They’re right there.”

  “Call for backup. We can’t handle them all with just us.”

  Lauren didn’t sigh, exactly, but she made a faint huffy sound in her throat. “You want me to light my phone up with them right there?”

  A dog howled. Energy thundered across the floor, blasted into Chess. The Lamaru had done it. They’d made a psychopomp. Probably one of many. Oh, fuck. She didn’t think she’d ever been so pissed off about being right.

  On the other hand … here was her chance. “Get into the stairwell and call. I’ll stay here and watch.”

  Her hand already clasped her pillbox.

  “I don’t think we should separate.”

  For fuck’s sake. Chess grabbed Lauren by the arm and practically shoved her into the stairwell, realizing too late that the door’s hinges weren’t oiled. They made an unholy squeal, cutting through even the howling dogs and the Lamaru’s chanting.

  The chanting stopped. Fuck.

  The heavy steel door of the stairwell slammed shut behind them. To get out the way they’d come in would take too long, would be too difficult. The screech and the silence had awakened the animals, or broken whatever spell they’d been under—a Hand of Glory, probably, and likely more than one. Even through the thick walls Chess heard them barking and howling, mooing and squealing and bleating. Too loud in her oversensitive ears.

  “Great job, Cesaria.” Lauren grabbed her arm and started dragging her up the stairs—not that it was necessary. Chess was already moving. She thought she remembered seeing a stairway door across from the offices where they’d been earlier; from there they had a straight shot down the hall and out the front entrance.

  A straight shot with at least two locked doors between them and freedom. Fuck.

  “Call for backup, damn it!” She yanked her arm from Lauren’s grasp and started digging in her bag. Not easy while running balls-out up a flight of stairs in the pitch-dark, but she’d do her best. She had those chunks of snake, the black mirror, the goat’s blood …

  Light exploded in her eyes. Lauren’s phone. “No signal.”

  It didn’t matter. They’d reached the top of the stairs. The door resisted but gave, and they sp
illed out onto the slick tiles outside the offices.

  The Lamaru lunged. More followed behind, racing up the central staircase that led to the office hall and the walkway she’d taken with Lauren to get to the psychopomp room earlier. Hard hands grabbed Chess’s arms, her waist and neck. She managed to fit the tips of her fingers into her pocket where her knife waited, but more hands caught her, held her fast. Her feet slipped on the floor.

  Lauren screamed. Through the crush of bodies and chaos of shouts and laughter Chess glimpsed her being dragged off down the hall.

  Dragged in the opposite direction. Chess and her captors passed out of the dim light of the offices and to the bottom of the three steps leading to the psychopomp room. She fought harder. Her muscles ached, sweat dampened her brow and her heart threatened to explode out of her chest. Still they held her, pressing her forward, their arms tight around her stomach and legs. Their harsh laughter echoed in her head.

  That room had solid iron walls. No exits. A small barred window. It wasn’t a room, it was a deathchamber, a deathchamber in a deathhouse, and she was being dragged right into it.

  And Erik Vanhelm waited for her there. The arms around her disappeared.

  He was on her before she had a chance to react, his heavy fist catching her across the jaw. Pain exploded in her face; her brain caught fire with it, throbbed with it, as though it had suddenly swollen three sizes. She hit the floor, her shoulder taking most of her weight.

  No time to feel it, or think about it. Get up, run, back to the hall. They’d catch her again, they were right there, but her hands were free, she could get her knife—

  He grabbed her hair, yanked her back. She heard Lauren scream.

  “Lauren!” she managed, her jaw creaking and throbbing, before her ass thumped to the cement. Vanhelm over her, grinning at her. He glanced up and nodded; she heard the door close behind them. That could not be good.

  “Cesaria Putnam,” he said, and the sound of her name in his voice made her want to scream. Ugly power crawled over the words like roaches. “I’ve wondered what you look like.”