City of Ghosts (18 page)

Behind them now. Constant cold as their hands passed through her, tried to grab her, hit her. Their rage infected her, made her already speeding pulse race faster, until it felt like she’d taken a bagful of Nips and a heart attack was waiting to pounce.

But she’d almost finished the circle.

Lauren’s voice rose behind her, behind the ghosts. Shit, why was she starting her summoning, the circle wasn’t finished yet—

Glass shattered. Pain lit her nerve endings like thousands of white lights as tiny shards of it embedded themselves in her skin. The windows high up on the walls. They’d exploded from the heat. Smoke poured in through the empty spaces.

Shit. And double shit, because not all the bits of glass were so small. A particularly large and sharp piece caught the light as one of the ghosts lifted it; she tried to jump out of the way but didn’t quite make it. A slice on the back of her right arm reminded her—as if she needed it—of the penalties for poor reflexes.

Hey, blood would help set the circle, right? Yes. Look on the bright side. Bright-side Chess, always sure in the knowledge that things would turn out just fine.

She flung herself onto the desk, dropping salt along the way. The beginning of her circle lay on the floor at Lauren’s left hand; all she had to do now was close it so the ghosts were subdued and mark them.

“I call you!” Lauren shouted. Chess, stunned, tumbled to the floor with a painful thud she hardly noticed. What was one more bruise? Far more important were the rising skulls, the bodies forming in the air covered with sleek black feathers. Her entire body went cold, colder than it had even moments ago when she was playing keep-away with the dead.

“What the fuck, Lauren? The circle isn’t—”

Too late.

The ravens rose into the air, screeching their death cries and drowning out Chess’s voice. The circle wasn’t finished. The ghosts weren’t marked. The psychopomps were free to latch on to any soul in the room.

Huge heavy wings stirred the smoke. Chess’s eyes watered and stung. She didn’t want to cough, didn’t want to draw their attention, but she couldn’t help it. Flames ate into the ceiling of the office.

“Benchitak! Benchitak!”
Lauren shouted, words of power Chess didn’t know but that sent more of Lauren’s ugly, strong power rippling over her skin. Could she control the ravens that way, just with her power?

Two of the ghosts disappeared into the ragged hole between the worlds Lauren’s ritual had opened; the remaining ravens flapped around the other three, their wings punishing the air. The ghosts tried to flee back through the walls but the salt line, incomplete though it was, held them long enough for the ravens to catch them, sharing the extra ghost between them.

Chess’s muscles relaxed. She hadn’t realized how tense she was, how much she’d expected the ravens to grab her, to drag her off.

Church magic. She could still believe in Church magic. It felt good.

What didn’t feel good, of course, was the volcano heat she stood in, or the rawness of her throat, or her dry, itchy eyes and her hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. Time to get the hell out of this place before it collapsed around them—on top of them.

She’d been standing close to the wall—too close. Any second that thing was going to burst into flames like a Haunted Week effigy, and it would take her with it.

Lauren still stared at her psychopomps, watching them disappear through the opening between the worlds so intently that Chess wondered for a moment if the woman didn’t have some sort of psychic connection with them. She’d done that once herself with birds, the month before. The night Terrible—

No. No fucking way. The last thing she needed to do at that moment was to start having those thoughts again. Not when her own death was so close that she could smell its hot smoky breath and only her fear of the City—and her absolute refusal to let the Lamaru beat her, those sleazy fuckheads—kept her from simply collapsing on the floor and letting it have its way with her.

That thought, more than anything else, galvanized her. She grabbed Lauren’s wet sleeve—she wasn’t the only one soaked in sweat—and pulled.

“We need to get out of here. Come on, I haven’t heard another explosion.”

“Just let me get my …”

“What?” Chess looked down. Looked down, and saw the empty floor at Lauren’s feet. The smoke hadn’t reached the lower half of the room yet; she could not blame what she saw—what she
didn’t
see—on blurred vision or optical illusion or anything else.

Oh, fuck.

The skulls weren’t there. The ravens still had form.

They’d gone to the City and taken their skulls, and they still had form, still had physical bodies. They’d disobeyed Lauren, disobeyed their training and instinct and just about every rule of magic Chess knew.

Her head refused to turn; she didn’t want to check to see if the hole between the worlds had closed behind the ravens the way it should have. The longer she didn’t look, the longer she could lie to herself—always an important skill to cultivate, and she was an expert at it—and pretend the hole had closed, that she couldn’t still sense it there, feel its faint chill on her slick skin.

She forced her neck to work, and turned toward the hole just in time to see the ravens burst through it and head straight for her.

Chapter Eighteen

The creation of a psychopomp is a complex process, one only designated Church employees may perform. It is to them we entrust the safety of all humanity.

—
Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens
, by Praxis Turpin

Death came for her on thunderous black wings, in sleek black bodies way too large for the room. The ravens stole the air from her lungs, the thoughts from her head. They were coming, and she could not escape. How the hell did someone escape from a psychopomp?

Getting out of the fucking office might be a good start. Lauren’s sleeve almost slipped from her fingers as she flung them both to the floor just in time to avoid swooping claws like the spikes that carried dead cows in the slaughterhouse below.

One thing about Lauren, she could think fast. She usually thought wrong, but fast still had its virtues. Her gun was already in her hand; they’d barely hit the tile before she took aim and shot, an action that made Chess scream inside.

But not out loud. Instead she slammed her own fist into her leg, hard, to give herself something else to focus on. They didn’t have time. Didn’t have—

Mistletoe
. She had mistletoe, taken from that hideous totem in her bag. It wouldn’t beat the ravens, at least she didn’t think so, but it might buy them a few seconds, and that was all they needed. Just enough time to get out the door.

Fire crawled across the ceiling above them. The ravens outlined against it looked larger than they had before, hollow outlines in the ever-moving ocean of flame.

Lauren shot again. The skull of the bird closest to them exploded in a cloud of bone fragments and dust, mingling with the smoke. No blood. No brains.

Chess had never known if psychopomps actually came back to life, if they were for the brief time of their use breathing creatures with pumping hearts. Seemed they weren’t. They weren’t animals at all, just reanimated corpses, empty shells full of instinct and magic.

Another shot. One of the ravens lost part of a wing. Feathers and bone flew, tiny scraps of desiccated skin hit the flames above and disappeared.

Yet another shot. A miss. No wonder—the smoke thickening the air made it harder and harder to see.

Chess stopped trying. Her fingers shook as they struggled with the plastic bag holding the mistletoe, finally yanking it open and pulling the leaves out.

No need to light a fire, at least. Lauren’s little pile of herbs still smoked a few feet away. Chess could have tossed them into the air, let them be devoured by the inferno hovering above them, but the mistletoe would have burned too fast. Instead she dug out her lighter and, holding the leaves by the stems, lit them.

“By this—” The words ended in a coughing fit. She struggled to swallow, dipped lower to try to breathe some fresh air—as fresh as it could be, anyway—and tried again. This time she managed to finish, dropping the leaves onto Lauren’s fire as she spoke.

“By this power I command the escorts of the dead. By my power I command the escorts of the dead. Hear me, escorts. I Bind you.
Ornithramii mordreus
, I Bind you.”

Shit. Not enough power. Maybe not enough power in the mistletoe; being used in a fetish bomb and then doused with salt probably didn’t do much for its effectiveness. Definitely not enough power in herself. She couldn’t seem to get grounded, to feel the energy flowing through her. Instead she felt the heat, the fire getting closer, the constant streaming ache in her eyes and the pounding in her head as her brain cried for more oxygen. They were running out of time. She didn’t want to die here, not this way….

Taking her eyes off the ravens and blocking out the deafening gunshots terrified her, but she had no choice. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Reached inside herself as far as she could, past the filth and slime and fear, past the boiling pit of rage, and found the spark of power hidden there.

And set it free.

“Escorts, I command you! I Bind you!
Ornithramii mordreus
, I Bind you!”

The shock of her energy as it combined with the mistletoe and hit the birds reverberated through her. It hadn’t worked completely. The mistletoe was too tainted, was connected to whatever had made the ravens murder weapons instead of servants.

But some of it was there. A tiny germ of mistletoe’s true power still lurked beneath the filth, and it combined with hers. Unfortunately, so did the filth. Her stomach lurched, her mouth filled with saliva. Not good. Not good energy. Foul, sick, twisted energy, inside her now.

It wasn’t permanent, she knew; when she let go of the ravens it would leave her, just like any other spell. But it was there for the moment, and that was bad enough.

The ravens fell silent, landed on the desk not two feet away. Their bodies were still but Chess felt them struggling. The Bind already slipped and thinned.

“We have to get out of here now, it won’t hold them for long.”

Lauren tried to speak but coughed instead. Together they slipped under the back of the desk and crawled to the door. Staying low was their only hope if they wanted to keep breathing. Which Chess pretty much did.

Her wet sleeve offered no protection at all from the doorknob’s heat, but she turned it anyway, steeling herself against a sight that nothing could possibly prepare her for.

How did the roof still stand? How had the metal walkway not collapsed? They stood in the middle of a nightmare, silent now save for the hungry, eerie susurration of the flames.

Ghosts still wove themselves in and out between the columns of burning wood and softened steel. They didn’t seem to have noticed Lauren or her yet; she imagined the intense heat masked them and the minor energy their bodies radiated. For now, at least. It wouldn’t be long before they were spotted, and not all of the spirits wandered on the lower floors. It could be a trap, a chute of fire just like the metal livestock chutes below. She shuddered at the thought and forced her heavy feet to move.

Her lungs burned. Every breath was an effort. The thin dry air didn’t seem to provide any oxygen at all. She expected to burst into flame at any second; the heat ravaged her, made her feel like dust herself, like an empty, hollow body—a psychopomp.

But she wasn’t heading for the City. At least she hoped to hell she wasn’t.

With Lauren at her side she led the way back toward the psychopomp room and the fire escape she hoped still existed. If it didn’t … if it didn’t, they would die. She almost didn’t care; at least the City was cool and dim.

No, not cool and dim. Cold and dark. She would not go there. Not today. Hell, when she finally went she’d probably end up in the spirit prisons herself; just because she worked for the Church didn’t mean she was a good person.

And she couldn’t bring herself to give a shit just then, either. She and Lauren clung to each other; Chess didn’t know who was helping whom. Every breath turned into a cough, every desperate swallow into sand rubbing her tonsils.

Walking caused its own set of problems. Smoke so thick she could cut it with her knife clouded her vision, forced her to feel the floor ahead with a careful toe before putting her weight on it. Lauren slumped against her; Chess didn’t know which bothered her more, the extra weight or the forced intimacy. Maybe Lauren wasn’t so bad—at least she’d shot down one of the psychopomps, had summoned them to begin with and saved both their asses—but that didn’t mean Chess wanted to snuggle with the woman.

The walkway hadn’t collapsed yet, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that it was only a matter of time. It jolted and shifted under their feet, their steps loud and somehow inappropriate against the hungry whisper of the blaze. She wanted to say something to Lauren, to push her off, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble.

Instead she coughed, her chest aching, and dragged her feet along the walkway. A dead Lamaru blocked the way, his face a mess of charred flesh.

And behind him, his ghost.

Chess whipped her head around, checking one last time for another exit. Nope. Instead, there were more ghosts. They’d been spotted, and two spirits had almost reached the top of the stairs by the office.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, were they ever going to get out of this place? Couldn’t something, sometime, just be straightforward and easy?

Right. Stupid question.

Lauren saw it too. They stopped short a few steps from the Lamaru. Through his spirit’s translucent form the door to the psychopomp room beckoned. Hell, it practically fucking glowed at them, promising all manner of seductive escapes, like a very expensive Downside hooker.

Those were promises Chess intended to see that it kept, ghosts be damned.

The last of her asafetida barely filled her palm. She had more graveyard dirt, she could—No. Hold on.

“When I say go,” she muttered to Lauren, “run for the door. But
stay down
, okay? Low to the ground.”

Lauren’s skin had a grayish cast to it. Any doubts Chess had about the dangerous, half-assed plan forming in her head were dispelled by the sight. She still didn’t like Lauren, still wouldn’t trust her with anything more important than a piece of lint. But they were in this together, and that little flash of the Grand Elder’s face, of her career being sidetracked into Debunking cases like ghostly mice in an abandoned barn, tipped the scales.

She’d been trying to ignore the heavy illness from the fetish still riding in her gut. Now she reached for it, felt the ravens and their fury, felt their utter ruthlessness. Creatures without soul, whose only purpose on the earth was to constantly seek what they did not possess.

She let them go.

Lamaru energy ripped through her; their revenge, the spell’s backlash, the effects of ten minutes of solid smoke inhalation combined with fear and stress and sadness and Cepts made her retch. Good thing her stomach was empty. There was never a good time to puke, but this moment had to be in the top ten worst moments.

“Go!” she shouted, as the ravens swooped out of the office and around the corner.

They hit the ghosts at the top of the stairs. One raven grabbed one ghost. The other two ravens kept on coming.

Well, shit. So much for that half-assed plan.

The ghost grabbed for her and Lauren as they neared him. Too late, Chess saw what she had not before: He held a jagged shred of steel.

He swiped at them as they ran past. Chess managed to shift to the side, narrowly avoiding a slice in the throat. Lauren wasn’t quite so lucky. The metal missed her throat as well but caught her shoulder.

Lauren screamed. Drops of blood showed purplish against the smoke. The ghost tried to scoop them up and absorb their power.

Whether the ravens saw it too, Chess didn’t know. All she knew was the sensation of talons scraping at her head but failing to find purchase. The tip of a wing slammed into her back and knocked her forward through the doorway of the psychopomp room.

The ravens shrieked their fury. The ghost made no sound but obviously shared their feeling. The remaining two ghosts pushed their way past him, reaching for Lauren, reaching for Chess as she scrambled to her feet and grasped the door so hard rust gritted into her palm. The ravens swooped around in a half-circle and came in for another dive.

They all appeared framed by the doorway: three dead men, their faces studies in frustrated anger and thoughtless greed. Two ravens pitch-black against the rippling red-orange wall behind them, getting closer every second.

Chess slammed the iron door.

Had she thought the psychopomp room felt like an oven earlier? Ha. That had been nothing more than a warm summer day. Her concerns about the iron-cored walls and floor had been absolutely correct. It didn’t seem possible that the room could actually be hotter than the fire outside, and intellectually she knew it wasn’t, but it sure as hell felt like it.

But it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter one bit, because they’d be out of there in a few seconds.

Lauren slumped against the wall while Chess leapt over the fetish to the window. Barred, yes, but her small victory over the ghosts and psychopomps outside gave her another burst of adrenaline; she felt capable of ripping the bars out of the window with her bare hands.

So much for feelings. No. No way could she pull that off. But it did feel like the bars shifted a little.

“Lauren!”

Lauren’s muffled reply sounded vaguely like “Mphgr.” Or maybe “Fuck off.” Or a combination of the two. Who cared? Not Chess.

“Lauren, get over here.”

This time Lauren obeyed, keeping her distance from the fetish still on the floor. Its horrible body had shriveled from the heat. “What?”

Shit, she really looked sick. Maybe this wasn’t the greatest idea. Well, of course it wasn’t. Did she have a choice?

No. “Get on the floor, on your hands and knees. I need to stand on you.”

“Are you kidding?”

Ah, Lauren was back to normal. Sort of.

“No. I need to get these bars off the window, and I need better leverage.”

For the first time since the ordeal had started she let herself really think about Terrible. He could have pulled those bars out of the window with one sharp tug. A wave of longing, of misery, washed over her so intensely that for a moment she was actually grateful for the heat and dryness. If even a few molecules of water still existed in her body she probably would have started to cry. And she definitely didn’t want to do that.

But she kept him in her head. Before she’d betrayed him—okay, before he’d found out she was betraying him—he would have reassured her. Would have reminded her that she could do anything. He’d believed that once.

So she could believe it now.

She grabbed the bars and stepped onto Lauren’s back, planting her right foot at the base of the other woman’s spine. Her left settled between Lauren’s shoulder blades.

The fire escape still existed. Thank the gods who didn’t exist, the fire escape hadn’t been destroyed.

Not for lack of trying, though—at least so she assumed. The Lamaru simply hadn’t had the chance to do it, caught up as they were in their fistfight below. Not so many as there had been—she checked her watch—just under ten minutes before, when she’d looked out the window in the office. Had that little time really passed?