City of Ghosts (37 page)

Chapter Thirty-nine

Into that great empty space beneath the earth’s surface the Church placed those angry souls, and calmed them; and peace reigned above and below through the Church’s power.

—
The Book of Truth
, Origins, Article 75

Silence so loud it hurt her ears followed the blast, a heartbeat moment in which everyone—Church, Lamaru, gang members, ghosts—stared at the enormous hole, at the cloud of choking black smoke rising to the ceiling, and at the crowd gathered where the doors used to be.

Baldarel’s power followed the flame a second later, ripping through the City. Chess’s hair blew back from her face, her grip on Terrible tightened as Baldarel’s magic threatened to blow her away.

The psychopomps disintegrated. Just—turned into clouds of black dust and evaporated where they stood, wiped out of existence in the time it took her to realize what was happening.

Baldarel’s voice boomed at them, invaded her body, thundered in her head until she couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t see anything at all. Fuck, that was bad, he was so strong, too strong, what the hell were they going to do, how the hell could they fight a being that powerful—

But then another voice rose, a familiar one, rolling over her and soothing her terrified mind. Elder Griffin, at first alone, then joined by the Grand Elder, by Elder Ramos, Elder Thompson. Tears started in her eyes without her realizing it, and without making the decision to do so, she stood up and joined them as well.

They were reciting the
Vakterum Alagarum
, a string of power words she’d never been allowed to speak. They were required learning for all Church employees, but like sigils, couldn’t be copied whole without risking a cast, so the
Vakterum
was not spoken until necessary. She’d written it out for her exams, all forty-five lines of it.

They drowned out Baldarel’s voice, buried it under a thick shower of pure Church magic. Chess’s heart lifted. It couldn’t be that easy, she knew it wouldn’t be, was waiting for the other shoe to drop; but for that one second she just wanted so fucking badly to believe it was possible, that they could win, that Baldarel would be subdued so quickly and easily.

Her own power rose again in her, coming from she didn’t even know where. Certainly she didn’t feel as though she had any left, as if she had anything left at all; the speed was wearing off and she was crashing and she smelled of garbage and puke and Terrible hadn’t replied. She felt as though a fire had ravaged her insides and left only charred lumps where her soul and power used to be.

But still it rose in her, and still their voices rose around her.

At least until Lauren leapt on her from behind and dragged her down again.

Terrible was already moving, his big body a blur as he reached for Lauren. Lauren’s arm tightened around Chess’s neck.

Chess threw herself forward with every bit of strength she could summon and some she couldn’t. Her knees hit the ground with a painful crack, but it worked. Lauren flipped over Chess’s back and landed in front of her.

She was so fucking tired of Lauren suddenly, the bone-deep exhaustion the woman had engendered in her from the very beginning. “I’d ask you to help us stop him but you won’t, will you?”

Shrieks and howls from the doorway interrupted her, and the last vestiges of bright soft hope left her. Baldarel’s family, dozens of them, their bodies low and fast, covering the floor, weapons raised in their mutant fists.

And worse. An army of psychopomps, more of them. Not like the oversized Lamaru hounds; these were larger, their ears stood high off their heads and their noses pointed up, their eyes glowed a bright unholy red and their black fur rippled with terrifying blue fire.

They didn’t howl. Their silence made the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up. Not dogs. Jackals.

They moved like a black ocean over the ghost-littered ground, sucking them up. Eating them. Eating the ghost parts, absorbing them, and with every bit they sucked into themselves they grew brighter, their eyes redder. With every part they absorbed, Baldarel’s power shook the air harder.

The Elders’ voices still sounded, the words of the
Vakterum
still pounding off the walls, but they were losing. Chess felt them losing, knew Baldarel felt it, too, and he started to glow and rose into the air. Grew above them, flew above them. A wraith.

He was a wraith
.

How the fuck had she not sensed it, known what he was? He’d touched her, he’d reached into her head like a bank robber grabbing cash from the till and she hadn’t known, hadn’t recognized the spirit attached to him or seen it. His toad-magic was too strong, the same toad-magic that powered Lauren’s glamour. Transformative magic, the magic of the shifter.

Silhouetted against his green-blue glow were the bodies of the men. The Lamaru had stopped fighting, were screaming and running, staring in confusion. Of course. They recognized Maguinness, thought their enemy had arrived and had no idea why.

Lauren got up, glanced at Chess with a sick, hideous leer of panic. “What is he doing here, was he the one you told?”

“He’s Baldarel, you stupid bitch, he’s known who you were all along.”

Lauren’s face went utterly white, her mouth fell open. Triumph rose in Chess’s breast, and damn did it feel good. “He double-crossed you and you were too—”

The first shouts turned her away just in time to see Baldarel’s family start slicing the Lamaru to shreds.

Lex’s and Terrible’s men reacted immediately. Chess almost smiled to see it, might have smiled if she hadn’t been so frozen with terror. They were there to fight, they were trained to fight—fight they would, and who or what they were killing didn’t matter.

Ghosts rose from the Lamaru, tried to keep fighting but couldn’t. Instead they spun around, heading for Baldarel, swinging at his feet. As Chess watched they disappeared, devoured by Baldarel, their energy fueling him and making him larger still, brighter still. How to defeat that? How the fuck did one destroy a destroyer, something that seemed to have no vulnerability, something neither living nor dead, that treated ghosts like chewable vitamins?

Lauren got up and ran. Chess let her, was glad to be rid of her. She had to find an Elder, any Elder, anyone who would listen to her.

She ran as fast as she could—which wasn’t very fast, with all that magic making the air heavy—back to where the circle had been. On the way she almost stumbled over Bruce Wickman’s body, eyes wide open and staring, blood soaking the front of his robe. Bruce was—had been—a Liaiser. How many more of her fellow employees had died?

She looked around for Terrible, found him cutting a swath through Baldarel’s children with a knife in each hand. Didn’t see Lex. Fear stabbed at her.

The psychopomps were getting closer, heat blasted from them. She didn’t dare glance back. Caught sight of Elder Ramos leaning against a wall with blood soaking his sleeve, his mouth still moving, reciting the
Vakterum
. She couldn’t feel the spell anymore, couldn’t feel any Church magic in the air at all. Her hand tightened around the handle of her knife.

Her firedish was still burning, the flame almost dead. Quickly she reloaded it. Asafetida, tormentil, ajenjible, and melidia, the most powerful herbs the Church had. Powdered bones of crows and toads. She’d grabbed almost everything in the supply room and she used it now, flinging it into the firedish, trying desperately to summon her own power and force it into the dish as well.

Baldarel might be connected to his body, but he wasn’t in it at that moment; that’s what made him a wraith and not simply a Host.

So where was his body?

Being able to return to it might grant him protection, at least somewhat, but it would limit his power. At that moment he was out of his body, he and whatever that thing was he’d hooked up with, that thing that combined with whatever soul-killing magic he’d worked to enable him to do what he was doing.

She ducked to avoid a fist, struggled to think past the ghosts speeding around her and the shouts and the sound of flesh against flesh, the smell of blood so thick in the air she could taste it. She had to be able to do something, had to be able to—
Psychopomps
.

Again. He had control over them, was able to somehow make them turn on the ghosts, to remove their careful training to make them harm ghosts instead of aid them, or to make them out of beasts whose instincts were to harm. Most animals weren’t used as psychopomps because they weren’t always effective in ritual, weren’t gentle or familiar, showed up early or late or failed to recognize the passport etched on the ghost’s skin and took the wrong spirit … but anything could be trained to be a psychopomp, in theory. All creatures had the capability to do it.

A heavy body fell into her, knocked her down. One of Lex’s men, locked in battle against a rabbity-looking man with a hole where his nose should have been and no chin. His arms, ending in bright knives clutched in his many-fingered fists, windmilled and spun, slashing the air, slashing the gang member’s robe. Chess interrupted her thoughts long enough to swing herself out of the way and drive her own knife into the enemy’s back. She caught the brief nod of thanks from Lex’s man and ducked back down to the firedish.

Anything could be a psychopomp. Psychopomps always beat ghosts, always.

To beat Baldarel they had to separate him from his ghost.

And what the fuck, it wasn’t like she had a lot of other options.

“I call on the escorts of the land of the dead!” Her voice barely registered in her ears. Shit, she had so little power left, all she had was adrenaline, and that might keep her awake but it didn’t do shit when it came to powering magic.

But magic was all around her, thick in the air. Baldarel’s magic. Could she …

Again. No other options. She closed her eyes, opened herself up, and started pulling at the energy around her, drawing it in, choking and gagging on it. It tasted like death and rot and sent horrible shivers down her spine, it burned her soul like acid.

But it was power, and when she tried again, her voice rang clear and loud in her ears. “I call on the escorts of the land of the dead! By my power and the power of the Church, by the power of air and earth, I call on you to take this man Baldarel back to his place of silence!”

A few of the beasts near her turned, looked at her. Was it her imagination or had the red light in their eyes faded?

“Escorts, I call you! By my blood and by my power, by my command you will take this man!”

She lifted her knife and sliced her palm over the firedish, barely feeling the pain through everything else. Her blood sizzled onto the burning herbs and raised thick clouds of purple smoke; her Bound blood, blood dedicated to the Church and mixed with the Church’s power.

Holy shit, she hadn’t thought of it before, hadn’t realized. By being Bound she had the Church in her, all of it, the power of the First Elders, the power of tradition, the power of every person in that room and of a magical system so complex and beautiful it brought her to tears.

Her blood was the Church’s blood. Her body was its body. Her power was its power, her soul its soul.

She raised her hand again, clenched her fist hard. She didn’t want to die.
Did not want to die
.

The blade of her knife, cold against the Binding scar. Searing, flashing, gut-wrenching pain as she sliced at the mark, digging deep so her blood spurted from the wound and into the fire, a thick pumping gush of it.

“By the Church and by my power I call the escorts! I command the escorts! Obey me now and take this man to his place of eternal silence!”

Power blasted through her like a lightning strike, a huge bright flash of it that stole her breath, stole her vision and voice. She floundered in it, struggling to keep her focus while the world shifted and the power erupted inside her like a geyser. She wasn’t Chess. She was the Church, every member, every employee, from its beginnings as an underground magic study group to that moment when it reigned supreme, and she would reign with it until her heart stopped pumping.

The tiny speck of consciousness that remained inside her brain knew that moment could be imminent. So much blood, so much smoke, the fire so bright it hurt.

The Binding marks burned ice cold. Through the blur of her tears she saw something move on her wrists, not just the lacy pattern but something else, oozing out with her blood, spectral forms: the First Elders. They’d put part of themselves into her. She’d thought the psychopomps at Lauren’s place had stolen their power and fed it back to her, but she’d been wrong, it had been the parts of them living in her blood that regrew and strengthened, and they formed themselves whole and towered over her, turned to join the crowd with a dignity that made her want to cry before another blinding rush of power tore into her flesh.

Baldarel pushed back. She felt herself flying, opened her eyes incuriously to see she
was
flying, her body twisting and turning on a wave of purple-black magic. Her apron fell off, spilled herbs and the fetish onto the ground. She ignored it. Who cared? Not she. She was too high to care, that was it—the ultimate rush, the ultimate high, the ultimate forget-it-all-fuck-it-all moment, and she didn’t want it ever to end. She pushed back at him, so easily, directing that tremendous force toward its creator and adding her own to it, and the First Elders joined her, all of them together. She felt the rip, felt the toad-magic break, felt him separate from his ghost with a shiver that kept going, running all over her body.

Screams rose from the ground below. She slammed against the smooth dirt wall, fell, didn’t feel it, didn’t care. To the screams were added howls, psychopomp howls: Baldarel’s beasts. She had no idea if that was a good sign or not.

And above it all, suddenly, came the Elders, chanting again. She felt each of them join in, felt all of them as a unit.

Another explosion.

The power disappeared in a flash. It … evaporated, left her there on the ground with tears running down her cheeks and blood still pumping from her wrist. She smelled ozone. Every nerve in her body felt fried to a crisp. She was a husk, the shed exoskeleton of an insect left to crumble into dust after its owner had outgrown it.