Unholy Ghosts (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

“Leave soul magic to the Church.”

—
You Can Do This! A Guide for Beginners
,
by Molly Brooks-Cahill

Salt poured through her shaking fingers, creating as heavy a line as she could to mark the edge of the circle. She didn’t always do a full cast, but this spell required it absolutely. No chances could be taken.
Power crawled from the ground under her feet, oozing over her skin. Her tattoos heated. Her hair stood on end. The ultimate rush, the ultimate high, more power than she’d ever felt before. Certainly more than she’d ever raised on her own, so much she didn’t know if she could contain it. Fear joined the party, tingling up from her stomach to pool in her chest. She felt her lips stretch into a shaky grin as she whispered the words she needed, calling the escorts of the dead.
When she’d finished the circle was visible, a deep glowing blue, shimmering in the air so bright her eyes ached.
The wind died. Good. The wall of light was working.
She walked the septagram again, lighting each candle in turn with a fresh match, dropping the used sticks into the firedish. Each candle got another word, another physical expression of energy expended with each spoken syllable.
Eratosh, Astagosh, Bidamosh. Ligorosh, Hapmalosh, Kolabosh
, and
Septazosh
. On
Septazosh
the flames blazed, shooting sparks up to disappear into the glowing roof of the circle.
Shouts and the sound of flesh against flesh filtered through the circle, but far away. They weren’t close yet, but that could change any second. She moved faster, forcing herself to use the fear, to give herself to it. A second of decision, a relaxing of the boundaries of her mind, and she slipped through.
Her heart still raced, but it was pure high now, clean and sparkling. She wasn’t Cesaria anymore. She was power. She was the gate.
Slipknot’s cold, squashy fingers didn’t want to close around the lump of silver she placed in his palm, covering the now-unreadable runes carved there. No surprise, nor was the muffled thud of his squashed-looking heart. She felt it, too, that extra power. The connection to the Dreamthief, tugging at her, refusing to let her forget even for a moment that he was there.
She pulled a length of twine from her bag and looped it around his fist, tying it securely but gently. With the black chalk she drew the passport she’d designed for him directly onto one of the few usable spots on his arm.
Into the smoking cauldron went asafetida, pungent and slightly greasy in the still air. Then ajenjible, and finally a handful of the corrideira Edsel ground for her earlier.
Smoke plumed in the air, twisting and curling, forming shapes she couldn’t identify but saw with eyes in her soul, whispering words she felt but did not hear. The skull shifted, as though the ground beneath it had trembled, but did not move.
“I call on the escorts of the City of the Dead,” she murmured, slipping her ritual knife from its case. “To set this man Slipknot free from his mortal remains. To take him to his rest. To sever him from his worldly prison and the power keeping him here.”
The skull moved again, but did not rise. The shouts outside the circle grew louder.
Chess held her left hand low over the top of the skull. “I offer an appeasement to the escorts for their aid.”
With the sharp tip she sliced the skin of her left pinky finger, a quick, deep cut. Blood dripped from the wound, purple-black in the bluish light. It spattered on top of the skull, tiny droplets sparkling as it flew into the air.
Something thumped to her left. Inside the circle. Slipknot’s heart sped up as energy filled his soul. Her own kicked up in reply. On top of all the speed, she felt like she had a freight train in her chest, barely contained by bone and muscle. Chess twisted back to the cauldron and dripped blood into it, then added a hair plucked from Slipknot’s head.
“Escorts, I call you!”
The last ingredient went into the cauldron, powdered crow skull. The smoke turned black, exploded from the wide iron mouth, and rolled to the roof of the circle, blocking the pure deep blue.
Smoke entered her lungs, insinuating itself into her body through her nose and mouth, curling around her arms. Her tattoos tingled and ached as if they were being recut into her skin.
Through the dark haze she saw the skull lift, move. More bones appeared, sketched out behind, built by and black from the thick, acrid smoke.
The shouts outside got closer, louder, as muscle and sinew grew on the bones, weaved itself together. Coarse black hair poured itself over the raw flesh. The dog’s eyes burned purple-green, iridescent, feeding on the same power that ran through Chess like a bolt of lightning. A long, low growl left its throat and crawled up her spine. Psychopomps shouldn’t growl like that.
With shaking hands she sprinkled the remaining powdered crow bone over the ruined body on the pallet. Energy blew back at her, dark and feverish, invading her body. Her voice creaked like a rusty hinge. “Set this man free,
cadeskia regontu balaktor
!”
Slipknot’s heart beat faster, louder, pounding arrythmically in her ears. Her own heart tried to syncopate but couldn’t, her chest ached. This was too much, too much, she couldn’t handle it…
Thin, high screams filled the air and she realized they were hers, hers and Slipknot’s as his soul escaped from the wreckage that used to house it and saw what it had become. He screamed, black eyes wide in his pale face, his mouth a gaping dark tear, screamed in terror and freedom and the horror he’d experienced.
She spilled water down her front as she forced some into her mouth, chasing away the awful smoke-and-speed drymouth.
“Slipknot, go! I call on the escort to take you to the City, I order you to go!”
The dog leapt. Slipknot’s screams turned shrill, so high-pitched she could barely hear them. This was wrong, she was losing it, too much energy circled around and her body couldn’t control it all, she was falling, she could feel him pulling her, sucking her with him through their connection…
Her right hand hit the edge of the firedish. Pain roared up her arm, bringing her back. She focused everything she could on cutting the invisible cord binding them, renouncing him.
It gave, with a sharp pang like a rubber glove snapping back into place. Her eyes filled with tears and dragged back into focus just in time to see the ragged hole, to see Slipknot reaching for her, trying to go back to the world he knew, as the dog gripped his arm in its heavy jaws and dragged him down into the emptiness of silent death.
Her vision flipped to black for a moment, the blackness of sleep. Not her sleep; the sleep of the thief, the sleep of those whose power he was using. Without Slipknot there to filter it, the full weight of the blood connection fell to her.
Oh, fuck…
Flashes of dreams, images of people in their beds, hundreds of them, uneasy on rumpled damp bedsheets, curled into balls on hard streets. She struggled to get it under control, to return to herself. Her hands twisted on each other, her muscles shook. Finally she pressed her left thumb into the palm of her right hand, sending screaming pain up her arm from the wound.
It worked. Her sight returned. She slammed back into herself, into the circle, and realized with both Slipknot and the dog gone, some of the power lessened, enough for her to take a breath. The cauldron burned her uninjured left hand as she lifted it, tipping its contents into the firedish and adding a handful of dried melidia.
Directly in front of her the blue wall wavered. They were close, so close, their shouts drowning out her thoughts. Her entire body shook. This was the dangerous part, and if she didn’t do it perfectly, didn’t end it now, the circle would be breached and she would lose. Lose and be lost.
The match head scraped across the rim of the firedish. “Ereshdiran,” she whispered, speaking his name for the first time. Just saying it hurt her tongue. “Ereshdiran
kalepta barima
.”
Someone shouted her name. Terrible. Terrible shouted her name. She opened her mouth to answer but her voice died in her throat. The thief appeared, his cloak moving in a breeze she could not feel, the hood thrown back to reveal shiny, pale skin stretched tight over the bones of his skull.
Something pulsed beneath that skin. Moving veins, veins that were not veins at all. They were worms, maggots like the ones in her hand. A low moan escaped her throat. He was going to eat her. He would drag her into the infested hell from whence he came and she would stay there, screaming while they overran her. While they ate her again and again, crawling under her skin too or burrowing through it, holes in her skin, holes in her brain…
She couldn’t stop staring at them, at his glittering hypnotic eyes and those teeth glowing in the dark blue-black air. Couldn’t stop seeing her own face reflected in them, miniature images of herself alone against a backdrop of nothing at all.
Hands appeared, long, curving fingers with bloodstained nails. They reached for her. She wanted to move but couldn’t, couldn’t even breathe. Even stuffed with adrenaline and speed as she was, her eyelids fluttered, her thoughts softened. Somewhere inside she knew what was happening, screamed and beat against her own flesh, but she could not will her body to obey.
Terrible shouted her name again, breaking the spell. She dropped the match. The melidia caught, sending a wall of flame into the air, separating Chess from the cruel infernal promise of those solid shark eyes.
She grabbed the amulet, ignoring the jolt of electric pain. Ignoring, too, the certainty that her cauterized wound would burst open again and worms would swarm. Flames seared her skin as she held the amulet over the firedish and summoned as much of the power circling through her as she could.
“Ereshdiran I command you to return. Return to your place of silence, return to your place of hiding, return to the place where you hold no power. I command this by fire, I command it by smoke. Return!”
She dropped the amulet into the flames.
A body flew into the circle, knocking her over. The blue wall disappeared. The circle had broken.
Her ears rang as the shouts and sounds of fighting, which had been muffled by the circle, slammed into them. Bodies ducked and danced around her, chaos destroying her stang and her careful arrangement. One of the fighting men stepped on her leg. She jerked it away, ignoring the pain, her eyes focused hard on what had been her altar.
The firedish fell over. The amulet spilled out, barely melted by the inferno that should have destroyed it.
Some instinct told her to yank her sleeve over her hand before she grabbed it. It wouldn’t lessen the heat much but it would hopefully keep the amulet’s design from imprinting her skin, possibly binding Ereshdiran to her forever instead of just until the amulet was destroyed.
Cold grass prickled her skin as she rolled away from the brawling bodies in what had been a ritual space. The Dreamthief followed. She caught a glimpse of him, pressing one talonlike finger against the head of a fighter, knocking him into sleep. A knife fell from the fighter’s hand—he was one of the Lamaru, not Bump’s—and Ereshdiran picked it up, flipping it expertly in his hand and stalking toward her.
She had the amulet. She had it, and he was bound to her, which meant supposedly she could control him, but she knew it wouldn’t work. Just to be certain, she tried it, shouting the Banishing words with every bit of breath and power she had. He didn’t so much as flicker.
Her feet pounded the ground as she turned left, making a wide circle around the brawling bodies. Blood flew through the air, weapons caught the moon like strobe lights. The air was heavy with sweat and blood and hot pain, thick with energy unlike anything she’d ever felt. Above her several birds flew in formation, avian psychopomps collecting souls. Death stalked the runways, death hovered overhead, and Ereshdiran did not halt his steady advance.
He was playing with her, waiting for her to tire out, taking whatever power he needed from the men nearby. Not as many of them as it had looked originally, but none of the men seemed ready to admit defeat. Bump’s men were powered by speed and loyalty, and the Lamaru, she had no idea but she guessed it was rage and greed and any number of illicit magics.
The thief turned, heading in her direction, and she saw her opening. She ducked down, narrowly avoiding being clipped in the head by a fist, and ran as hard as she could back to the remains of her altar. She had some melidia left, some crow’s bone and corrideira. They might give her enough strength to Banish him for a few minutes, long enough for her to set the fire back up, cast another circle.
She darted past another fighting couple and grabbed what she could. A heavy body fell on her. One of Bump’s men, out cold or dead. She didn’t know which. All she knew was the ground swooped up from its rightful place and hit her, the edge of the amulet sliced through her shirt to bite her skin deep, and the thief was closing in on her with a triumphant smile as her blood poured over his amulet again.

Chapter Thirty-seven

“Thus the Church rescued humanity, and a covenant was made, and it was based on Truth.”

—
The Book of Truth
, Veraxis, Article 27

Her stomach burned, so hot it felt cold, as something in her gut shifted and moved. He was drawing from her, using her, strengthening their bond. She felt herself being sucked into the raging caverns of his black eyes, sucked in and thrown into the dreams of the city’s sleepers.
Voices raised behind her, as if the witches sensed what had happened. A chant, words of power, flying into the air and gathering strength. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs refused to expand, her limbs did not want to move. She tried to crawl forward but fell, unable even to support herself.
Below her in the earth, power still lurked. She’d felt it earlier when she cast the circle, she knew it was there. Her tired mind rebelled, against what she didn’t even know anymore and wasn’t sure it mattered. This was it, she’d lost. She was bound to him, connected, and he would drain her dry like a fucking battery and turn his attentions to someone else, to everyone else. And her soul, that worthless little thing, would be trapped here in her wasting body. Not in the City but without any of the reasons to stay out of the City. No pills. No smoke. No nothing that made life worth living. Just a soul, stuck perhaps at the bottom of that well forever. Stuck here at the airport.
In her left hand she clasped the ingredients she’d grabbed. Blood still trickled from her pinky and dripped to the dirt. Her blood, feeding the earth. Her blood, feeding the Dreamthief. The earth…haunted…the City beneath it and the Lamaru’s plan to set the spirits free…
“Chess! Chess!” Terrible’s roar, audible over the interrupted chants. At least someone was looking for her, someone noticed. What had he said they called them, the pilots? Flying aces? At least she’d done something right, at least she’d learned what was really haunting the airport…flying aces. Dozens of them. Here. Aces in the hole. Aces up the sleeve. She could certainly use one of those.
Aces who still haunted here, above the ground. Aces who hadn’t gone below to the City. The words kept circling in her head, like they should mean something, like she was trying to tell herself something but couldn’t get through the thick, black static of the thief’s connection.
She forced herself to relax and rest her forehead on the ground. The City. The murderous ghosts, the Lamaru controlling ghosts…controlling what they summoned…
The smell of dirt, dirt and smoke and green things, filled her nose, cleared her head just enough for her to open up, to focus on her pinky and her blood as it poured into the earth.
Her swirling thoughts snapped into place. The airport was haunted. Real ghosts. Real ghosts who’d been here for just over a hundred years, who’d been created when the place burned, when…sleep deprivation caused madness. Madmen who died sometimes splintered apart, became something else, twisted and merged and formed new entities.
Like Dreamthieves.
If this was where he’d come from, if he was made from discarded parts of the airport’s ghosts, they would seek to reabsorb him. They would overpower him, dissolve him.
If she was right. If she wasn’t…if she wasn’t she’d just better hope she was strong enough, because an entire battalion of ghosts would take them all out, every living person on the field, in about two minutes.
Fuck it. She didn’t have a choice, did she? Story of her life. Either the thief and Lamaru would kill them all or the ghosts would, but at least with the ghosts she had a chance. She forced energy into her blood, into the earth, and opened herself to it as wide as she could, waiting for it to leap back into her, to flood her senses. Waiting for it the way she waited for her pills to dissolve, every muscle in her body tense and expectant—but this would be more than her pills, more than any drug. The ultimate rush. The Summoning words hesitated on her tongue, ready to leap from her mouth into the air the second the power hit her.
Nothing happened. She could feel the thief advancing, knew he would be on top of her any second. This had to work, had to work, she had no idea how she would fix it later or what it might mean to Bump or Lex if she did, but at least she might be alive to do so, relax…
Energy surged up from the ground, into her finger, through her. Earth power, solid power. The kind spirits could not draw on, not like humans could. It was their prison, they could not pass through it and they could not use it.
She flipped over. The thief was there, only a few feet away. Not much time at all. Her fingers closed around a match, scraped it on her jeans, touched it to the herbs spilling from her hand.
“
Kadira tam! Kadira tam!
You are compelled! With blood I summon you and with blood I compel you!” Wind tore the last words from her throat. Nothing happened.
Shit. She’d never done it before, was breaking half a dozen Church laws by even attempting to do it now.
The Dreamthief stood directly above her, knife at the ready. She raised her leg, trying to kick him away, but it passed through him. Only the knife and the hand holding it were solid. Good.
She lay back, as though too weak and afraid to do anything else, and waited for him to lunge. The opening would come, be ready…
He moved, dropping down, and she shoved herself up as hard as she could. His blade sliced her arm but she barely noticed, too distracted by the freezing pain of passing directly through him.
She didn’t bother to break her fall as she came out behind him, but let herself land on her chest with a thud. The rest of the melidia was still there on the ground, it might be enough.
Over the now-quieting shouts of the fighting men came another sound, a low, heavy buzz like a drill. She ignored it. She’d failed, but she was still alive, and she would not go down without a fight. If he was connected to her she could unconnect him.
The melidia
was
there. The black chalk was gone, but she had her knife. Not the best option but an option.
The buzzing drone grew louder, drowning out everything else. Chess grabbed her knife and brought the point to her left arm, gritting her teeth against the pain, glancing up to watch the Dreamthief pick himself up off the ground.
Hands on her, barely closing around her shoulders before an ugly crack rent the air. The witch’s body crumpled to the ground, his head twisted sideways. Terrible’s feet by her leg. He’d broken the man’s neck.
She slid the knife along her arm. Up, over, down…a Bind rune, a protective rune, a rune of purity, slashed into her flesh. Agony grabbed hold of her with sharp teeth and made her vision waver as the runes warred with the thief’s evil tinge in her blood.
Wind swept over her skin, whipped her hair around her face. She grabbed the melidia and leapt to her feet, stumbling over bodies as the thief lunged for her again. His knife drove into the spot where she was only seconds before.
That was when she realized no one was fighting. They’d stopped. They’d stopped, and they were staring at the sky as planes droned and swooped overhead, so many it seemed the sky was made of them. They were looking up.
It had worked. The ghosts had come.
Ducking her head, she weaved through the men and dumped the last of the melidia out of the Baggie when she reached the edge of the crowd. It lit with a hiss. She squeezed the wound on her pinky, dripping blood on the pile, and dropped the amulet into it.
Flesh smacked against flesh behind her. Her head turned instinctively and she saw Terrible again, his teeth bared in pain and rage, his hands closed around the thief’s lone solid hand hovering above her head.
The thief disappeared.
White lights turned the runway into an alien landscape, colorless and bizarre, as the first plane dove in for a landing. Men scattered, resuming their fighting in twos and threes.
“Ereshdiran, I command you to return. Return to your place of silence, return to your place of hiding, return to the place where you hold no power. I command this by fire, I command it by smoke. Return!”
Another plane, and another. Spectral men emerged, climbing from the open holes as the propellers slowed.
Ereshdiran reappeared, at her side. He’d lost the knife when he disappeared, but his teeth looked solid enough, as well as both of his hands.
Chess steeled herself and grabbed them, like dipping her hands into dry ice. She reached for the power in the ground, reached for the dead pilots, and drew them in.
She screamed. Her stomach twisted and lurched in her belly, her legs went weak. She just had to hold him until the amulet melted, just long enough…she drove power into the fire, heating it, forcing it to burn so bright she had to close her eyes.
He disappeared again, leaving her gripping nothing, with energy surging through her body like a speeding car.
The fire. She held her hands over it as close as she could bear, anticipating his next move.
She was wrong. A Lamaru leapt for it, his face twisted toward her so she could see the thief staring at her from his eyes. Possession; a clever move, but a bad one. He’d forgotten humans could be hurt, that they died.
Terrible’s knife flashed. Blood spattered over her hair and face. The witch fell, still scrabbling at his throat with clawed hands. The thief emerged from his body like the moon rising over the trees.
The witch’s blood hit her fire, building it with more of Ereshdiran’s own power. The thief wavered, trying to disappear. His ugly, bulging eyes shifted to the right, watching, as the ghosts advanced on him.
Another plane landed. Another, practically on top of one another, the precision in their movements as breathtaking as it was terrifying. Still the sky was full, still the amulet burned at her feet. It hissed and popped as the copper melted.
“I compel you!” Chess squeezed her finger, shook it and her arm. Blood flew from her wounds into the air, ran down her hand to the ground. She lifted it, pointed her dripping finger at Ereshdiran, and shoved as much energy as she could pull from the ground into her next words, so much her throat burned and her eyes watered. “I summoned you and you are compelled! By blood and power you will obey me! Ereshdiran
tama longram
!”
For one heart-stopping minute the ghosts didn’t move, and her stomach flew into her throat. If she’d been wrong about Ereshdiran’s origins, or if she’d brought them here but wasn’t able to control them, they were all dead. Had she used enough power?
Ghosts brushed past her, through her, stalking Ereshdiran. His mouth opened, a smudgy hole in his face as they crowded around him, closing in, closing ranks.
Terrible’s breath caught. Chess dragged her gaze away just long enough to see him, his head thrown back, for once ignoring everything around him. His fingers closed around hers. “Look,” he said quietly. “Look at them.”
The planes cut patterns through the air. They shot straight up into the sky then dove back down. And every minute it seemed more of them appeared, more and more, different planes, newer-looking ones, older ones.
Movements across the field. Bumps’ men, victorious, dragging bodies across the gritty landscape. Where was Bump? She hadn’t seen him since the ritual started. He’d probably gone back to his car, waited and watched, let the others do the work. What else could anyone expect?
Her legs weakened suddenly, like someone had smacked her in the backs of the knees. Before she could straighten she felt them, felt people waking in their beds all over the city with their hearts pounding, already forgetting the details of their nightmares but glad to be awake and alive.
The fire went out. Chess looked down and saw only a river of gleaming copper, already cooling into a twisted shape in the grass. She held her hand over it, opened up. Nothing. Clean. The copper was empty…and so was she. No more thief lurking inside. Nothing but her own self, and the overwhelming power of the earth and the ghosts. She closed her eyes, held on to it for a minute. Feeling good. Feeling alive, and actually glad to be so. Then, regretfully, letting it go. That power wasn’t hers. She released it, let it seep down through her body to ripple out from her feet.
A pale, shriveled hand thrust itself into the air between ghosts, Ereshdiran’s hand, closing into a desperate fist before shrinking back on itself and disappearing. Chess shivered, and suddenly she couldn’t stop shivering. Balancing on her own was impossible; she leaned against Terrible, clutching at his shirt, and realized he was shaking, too. The ground was shaking, rolling beneath their feet like it was trying to give birth.
Too late, she realized her mistake. She’d taken earth energy and combined it with her own, used it to call and power the ghosts; now she’d returned that ghost-tinged energy to the ground, and it was reacting to the unnatural mix. Violently.
As the world started to spin around her, as she half-ran, half let Terrible drag her toward the fence and the parking lot, she saw the planes were disappearing one by one from the sky, from the runways. It was like a meteor shower overhead, lights zooming through the darkness and popping off. She hadn’t Banished them, hadn’t had a chance…hadn’t needed to.
She stumbled. Her ankle screamed but she ignored it, her legs aching and her breath coming in gasps. Bump’s men caught up, passed them.
The dilapidated wooden building collapsed. Water surged from the well beside it, a geyser of sewage. Chess ran harder. They weren’t far now, the fence was just ahead—
Cracks formed in the mud, snaking in front of her, to the sides. Blackness oozed around the edges of her vision. She couldn’t keep up this pace. Rocks flew through the air, chunks of concrete, sharp bits of gravel that stung everywhere they hit.
The fence ripped, poles falling apart. The rusted links bounced and dissolved under her feet as they ran across it and got in the car. Terrible started the engine and threw it into reverse, slamming the gas, sending a shower of gravel out from under the big, broad tires. The last thing Chess saw as they drove away was an enormous slab of concrete from the runway, standing vertical, sinking like a wrecked ship back into the earth.