City of Ghosts

by Stacia Kane

  What the fuck did he think this was, some kind of spy movie? Did he want to get into a clever little dialogue with her or something?

  Fuck that. She dug her shoulders into the floor and jerked her legs up hard; her knee connected with the side of his face with a satisfying—if painful—thump.

  His grip on her hair loosened. She rolled away, tried to get up. Not fast enough. His arms closed around her, trapped her. His weight pinned her to the floor. She inhaled a mouthful of foul-smelling dust that tasted of raw meat and sand and gritted her tongue. The floor had been clean earlier. What was going on in there?

  Lauren screamed again, barely audible through the thick door. Heavy footsteps thundered past in the hall. A harsh voice: “Erik?”

  “Five minutes.” Vanhelm’s breath heated her ear, her neck. His arm pressed hard on the back of her neck, shoving her face farther into the filthy floor. Not just dirt or dust; blood seeped across the cement toward her, blood from the dead animals in the corner.

  A chuckle from the doorway. “Make it fast, we don’t have time.”

  She barely heard it. Her stomach lurched. Only her desperate swallows, the realization that if she threw up she’d have to lie there with her face in the puddle, kept her from losing the little bit of water she’d had in the car. The germs on that floor, in that blood, the dirt on her body, the hands holding her down, so dirty, so filthy … She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move, she was trapped, she was too small, too weak, and she deserved it. Shit, why hadn’t she managed to grab her pills when she was in the stairwell? She needed them, she couldn’t think without them.…

  Vanhelm’s free hand beneath her stomach, finding the button of her jeans. Undoing it.

  She broke. The dizzy haze of very early withdrawal, the paralyzing fear, the memories of lectures in a horrible sonorous voice about germs and the germs filthy little girls carried—they snapped, set her free, disappeared from her mind, and all that was left was mindless, red-haze rage.

  He meant to rape her. Had waited up there, lurked up there, punched her, shoved her into filth, and now the scumsucking motherfucker actually thought he was going to get his sick fucking rocks off, use her without her permission?

  Nobody was ever, ever going to do that to her again. Never.

  She went limp, germs and bugs and the horrible-tasting dust forgotten; something cold and watchful replaced them in her mind. Let him think she’d given in. She forced a few whimpering sounds out of her throat. Fucker was about to die, she’d feel his blood pour over her hands …

  Her zipper went down. No fear. Just waiting. Only one of them was in danger here and it sure as fuck wasn’t her. His arm still pressing the back of her neck. She felt it like a brand, felt him behind her like a movie she was watching. Every cell in her body, every cell in her brain was focused on him, nothing else existed.

  “Erik?”

  “I’ll be right there,” he shouted.

  “No, Erik, shit—”

  “Five minutes!”

  Her knife was in the pocket of her jeans. She’d have to reach it fast. When was the best time? If she moved too soon he wouldn’t be vulnerable enough. He’d still be focused on her entire body instead of the parts he wanted. She had to time it right, just right …

  A gunshot, incredibly loud. Lauren screamed—she must have found her gun. Male voices shouting. Lauren still alive. That’s what mattered.

  Her pants down now, cold floor against her soft skin. His arm lifted her, pulled her to her knees, cold metal against her throat. Not her knife. “Don’t move.”

  He had no idea what mistake he’d just made. No idea at all.

  The sound of his robe shifting behind her, so loud. So slow. Her knees trapped by her jeans. The blade in his right hand, pressed to her right side. Roll away from it. A smell in the air, one she should know but couldn’t identify, she was too focused on the moment, on waiting for the right moment.

  His other hand lifted from her body. Positioning himself. Now. Now!

  She spun to her left, dropping her elbow, flinging her right arm behind her. Her shoulders knocked his knife out of the way; her arm missed him but her legs, carried along with the force of her spin, did not. She knocked him on his side, her legs over his chest. Not enough, not bad enough.

  His blade sliced her thigh. No time to scream, but fuck that hurt, oh, shit, she needed her fucking pills and he was keeping them from her, it was his fault.

  Good thing she still had her gloves on. Her left hand shot out, grabbed him where it would hurt the most, squeezed as hard as she could. His scream broke the air around them into vicious shards, brought more footsteps, coming back. She didn’t have time—the smell was stronger, her heart pounded, her body knew what it was even if her mind refused to accept it, and the Lamaru were shouting outside and banging on the door.

  Her knife’s handle leapt into her hand; she flicked it open, lifted it, ready to bring it down right into the center of his evil, foul little chest—

  Something hit her, sent thick black vibrations through her body. A curse bag, energy so vile that tears sprang to her eyes, like the fetish she’d found earlier. Exactly like it, in fact. Another toad fell to the floor at her knees. She wavered, unsteady, trying to catch her breath. Blood trickled down her leg from the wound on her thigh. She scrambled away, not wanting her blood anywhere near it, kicked it away from the blood already there. Another bell in her head. Her back slammed into the cold cement wall, so hard she thought she felt it shake behind her. Hard enough to echo in her head like a gunshot.

  They grabbed Vanhelm, dragged him from the room. She took one faltering footstep, then another, pressing herself against the wall to try to get as much distance as she could from the thing; it radiated evil like a dead fish throwing off stink, and she couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from it. But her knife was still in her hand and she was ready to go, ready to move, she could catch them. Catch them fast, slice their throats, and take her pills.

  She turned to do just that and stopped short in the doorway. Sure, early withdrawals were one thing, but this hallucination was beyond anything she’d ever experienced. Was this—Fuck, what the fuck happened?

  Instead of the slaughterhouse she stood in the doorway of a hell dimension, a fiery cavern of smoke and noise and heat blasting her face and body, making her throat even drier. Flames rose almost to the ceiling, half-engulfing one of the iron walkways crossing the length of the building.

  Something clicked in her head. The building snapped back into focus and she saw it all. For one dizzying, horrible moment she just stared, rooted to her spot in the doorway as men’s shouts mixed with the frantic screams of the animals and crackling of flames. Through a hole in the thick, oily smoke she saw the Lamaru’s firedishes, the ones they’d been using in their ritual, turned over.

  But more flames crawled along the pens, far from the dishes. What the—

  Blue flames exploded at the far wall. The building shook; the ceiling’s groan was audible even over the rest of the noise. Holy shit. The first explosion she’d thought was Lauren’s gun. The second—when her back had hit the wall. Not that hard. An actual explosion. A bomb going off.

  The closest exit was probably through the offices. Fuck picking the locks, she’d smash the glass doors, she’d find something heavy to use, run to the right and get the fuck out—

  Vanhelm appeared again, his face twisted in something that could have been a smile, could have been a grimace. She had no idea and didn’t give a fuck anyway. All she could do was raise her hands, try to get past him, but his fist slammed into her face again, knocking her down, and the door of the psychopomp room slammed back into place. And locked.

  She was trapped.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The dead never cease in their quest to harm; the Church never ceases its vigilance against the dead.

  —The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 77

  Okay. First things first. She had to get the hell out of that room befor
e it turned into an iron-bound oven. Already her shirt clung to her body and her bangs stuck to her forehead in an itchy clump.

  No, wait. Really first things first, she needed her pills. Her hands shook as she popped the catch on her pillbox, grabbed three Cepts, and crunched them into a bitter, chalky mess. In her haste to wash them down she spilled water on her shirt. Whatever. Probably not a bad thing, considering she was trapped in a fucking inferno.

  And even if she hadn’t been she didn’t give a damn. The water got her pills down her throat, and chewing them up had given her a small dose, and that was all that really mattered. Almost all that really mattered. The fog in her head lifted a little, she could think again, focus again.

  Now to get out of the room. Her palm practically sizzled when she placed it against the door. How could the flames spread that fast?

  Another explosion answered that question. Her heart jerked in her chest like an insect caught in a spiderweb. That’s what she was, a trapped insect, struggling to stay alive even though she would probably fail.

  She skirted the toad-thing on the floor again to check the window. The bars didn’t want to give under her hand but—there appeared to be a fire escape. Not directly outside the window, but close enough. If she could get out she could probably reach it.

  Not like she had much choice, right? She’d take her chances leaping for the fire escape rather than be roasted slowly in a sealed room.

  Except—Damn it! Damn it fuck damn it! Lauren. Where was Lauren?

  And did she really care?

  No. No, she didn’t.

  But Lauren didn’t deserve to burn to death in a stinking, shrieking slaughterhouse. And how the hell would Chess explain to the Grand Elder that she’d saved her own ass without having any idea what had happened to his daughter?

  She had to at least try to look. She had to at least try to get the door open—if they investigated, which they would, they’d know if she’d gotten out of the room or not, and that she should have been able to. She wanted—needed—to be able to say she’d tried, and to say it clean.

  Her lube syringe was almost empty, but not quite. One small piece of luck, at least. It only took a couple of seconds to pick the lock, even with her none-too-steady hands.

  Deep breath. She tugged her sleeve down over her palm, ignoring the don’t-open-the-hot-door-you-dumbass warnings ringing in her head, and yanked the knob.

  The month before, she’d had to visit one of the spirit prisons beneath the Church, a horrible fire-bright cave of misery.

  This was worse.

  The noise had not abated. Smoke stung her eyes, burned her throat. Black smoke, gray smoke dimmed the painful sharp light of the flames. Animals still screamed. The stench of burning hair and roasted flesh filled the air, it tasted of death and ashes and made her gag. Half the building was given to the fire. She could hardly see from the screaming orange blaze and the sweat running into her eyes and blurring them.

  But even the fire and the noise and the smell she could have dealt with. Would deal with. What chilled her blood despite the heat were the ghosts.

  The Lamaru—at least some of them—had been Hosting. She knew that, or would have known if she’d thought about it. What she hadn’t thought about was that when they died, a psychopomp would come for them—but the ghosts to which they were bound didn’t “register.” No psychopomps. No one to summon the slaughterhouse’s psychopomps. And she sure as fuck wasn’t going near whatever the Lamaru had made, even if she could find them on the main floor.

  Ghosts milled about down there, flickering out of existence when they passed through the hot flames, reappearing moments later when the heat energy abated and they were able to take form again. A clump of them struggled up the stairs, their horrible faces turned to her, their hollow eyes focused on her with hateful intensity.

  In their hands they clutched knives and chunks of cement. Armed ghosts. Deadly ghosts, coming right at her.

  In the psychopomp room she’d be safe from them. They wouldn’t be able to get through the iron walls and door. She could turn right around, work on the bars in the window, get it open and reach the escape … and leave Lauren to die.

  “Lauren! Lauren!” Why not scream? Wasn’t like she could hide her presence, not with the ghosts staring right at her. In fact, this could be better. Get them watching her mouth, make them pay attention to her face so they wouldn’t see her slip her hand into her bag.

  “Cesaria!” It hardly sounded like Lauren’s voice; thin and high with an edge of panic. Still, it was Lauren, and that—plus the asafetida in her fist—was a relief.

  What wasn’t a relief was that Lauren’s voice seemed to be coming from the offices at the opposite end of the walkway. The main stairs, the one the ghosts climbed, stood between herself and Lauren. She’d have to go through them.

  She chanced a quick look in that direction, taking her focus off the ghosts. The offices on this level had solid walls—perhaps they too were iron-bound—but narrow horizontal windows interrupted them just below the ceiling. Cracks stretched across one of them; as Chess looked, something hit it, pushed the glass a few inches farther out. Yes. Lauren was in there.

  The ghosts had reached the top of the stairs. Beneath the sweat now coating her entire body, her tattoos itched and burned.

  But beneath that was the sweet soothe of her pills, an entirely different kind of warmth spreading through her, chasing the worst of the darkness and giving her some strength in return. They were just a couple of fucking ghosts—she did this shit for a living, didn’t she?

  She sure as fuck did. Okay. Her fist tightened around the asafetida as she eyeballed the luminescent dead advancing on her. Seen through them, the flames looked dimmed. Shadows formed behind them like bruises on their nonexistent skin. The black holes of their mouths opened.

  She flung the asafetida, twisting her upper body and giving it to them right in the eyes—where the eyes would have been, anyway. “Arkrandia bellarum dishager!”

  The generic Banishing words made them flicker a bit. She hadn’t expected the words to actually work, not without any other ritual tools or anything to give her control over them. But the asafetida bound them in place. It wouldn’t last long, but for now they were frozen, and the ones behind weren’t at the top of the stairs yet. This was her shot.

  The strap of her bag dug into her sweat-slicked skin as she pushed past them, through them. Damn, she never would have thought the frigid, bone-deep chill of a ghost’s body would be a relief, but it was. If she hadn’t been so desperate to get out of that place—and if she hadn’t been at least halfway sane—she might have been tempted to hang out there for a minute or two.

  But she was at least halfway sane, and more than that she was at least somewhat intelligent, and she reached the door of the office before the ghosts re-formed themselves. “Lauren!”

  The door rattled in its frame. “Stand back!”

  Stand back? Those ghosts would come at her again any second, and she was almost out of asafetida, and Lauren wanted her to—

  The bullet sent wood chips in all directions, took a chunk out of the wall three inches to Chess’s left. On instinct she threw herself to the floor in the opposite direction, then regretted it when her cheek hit the sizzling metal.

  Another shot. Lauren flung the door open and practically yanked Chess’s arm out of its socket pulling her up.

  Shit, what the fuck had happened to her? Everything in the building glowed like the inside of a furnace already—hell, it wasn’t like the inside of a furnace, it was the inside of a furnace—but Lauren resembled a madwoman. A madwoman with a bruised face and a wig made of blood-soaked cotton wool. Her torn clothing stood in mute testimony to what at least might have occurred; the rage in her eyes almost made Chess drop back to the floor.

  She’d seen eyes like those before, usually right before a fist made contact with her face or a boot with her ribs.

  It didn’t seem to be directed at her this time, though, and Che
ss couldn’t blame her. If she hadn’t been delightfully insulated from those horrible emotions—which meant all of her emotions, all of the time, really—she’d probably have had the same sort of look on her face.

  But that wasn’t important at the moment. “You have a gun.”

  Lauren, holding said gun out before her like a divining rod, gave Chess a narrow glance. “You know I have a gun.”

  “Yeah, but—you have a fucking gun. Why didn’t you blast out of there before? Why the hell did I have to risk my life to come get—”

  “Fire escape.” Lauren wrapped her sticky, sweaty hand around Chess’s and dragged her to the window. “I had a fire escape.”

  Broken glass crunched underfoot; Chess felt it but couldn’t hear it over the general din. “What do you mean, you had—Oh.”

  No chance of any more escapes out of that window. A few scraps of twisted metal, rough-edged and pitiful, still clung to the sheer stone wall; fifty feet below, the rest of the ladder lay in a crumpled heap, dust still swirling around it.

  Beyond the wreckage of their hope for a quick, simple escape the parking lot teemed with life, illuminated by flames. A few animals had managed to save themselves: a couple of cows, a gaggle of pigs and sheep, a number of dogs—how many had there been? Too many.

  Whatever. Chess couldn’t bring herself to worry about the Lamaru plan at that moment. Save her ass first, then think about the Lamaru. Or rather, then think about the Lamaru in some manner other than how much she’d like to wring each and every one of their necks personally for this. Especially Erik Vanhelm’s.

  She knew nothing about the escaped dogs, whether they were just generic Labs or hounds like those the Church used, or wolves like the executioner’s had been, or worse. Hell, they could have been magic-cranked pit bulls for all it mattered. No matter how tough or bloodthirsty they were, she gave them ten minutes at the outside before they met their deaths. If the black sow had been an unexpected treat, this was the sort of event that became Downside legend: The night that food walked right past, practically begging to be killed and eaten.