Unholy Ghosts Read online

  “I want to—” Her mouth snapped shut.

  “What?”

  “I … What are you having done?” She watched, fascinated and a little disgusted, as the tattoo artist peeled a long, thin strip of bloody flesh from Terrible’s back.

  “One more,” the artist said, and Terrible glanced back at him and nodded.

  “Terrible … what the fuck?”

  “Scar, Chess. You wait. Ain’t had the fun part yet.”

  “Um … there’s a fun part?”

  The artist came back with a scalpel, shining silver, and bent over. Terrible’s eyebrows twitched, but he stayed silent—they all stayed silent—while the artist cut and peeled off another strip. He blotted the blood with gauze.

  “So what happen? You right?”

  “Yeah … um …” The artist had a bowl of something now that looked like ashes. As Chess watched, he started rubbing handfuls of it over the wound he’d created—at least she assumed it was over the wound, she couldn’t see it. “Have you seen that kid Brain?”

  “Naw, can’t say so. Why?”

  “I want to find him. He came by my place this morning, said Hunchback kicked him out, but I—”

  “Fuck.” Anger poured over Terrible’s face like molasses. “That squidgepopper. I fuckin told him, ain’t the kid’s fault. We see him, too? I’d sure do with paying him a visit now.”

  “Ready, T?” The artist stood behind Terrible, rocking slightly on his feet like he wasn’t sure if he should run or pretend everything was fine. Chess didn’t blame him. She was half ready to run herself, her legs twitching and her heart pounding. She was jumpy enough, she didn’t need two hundred and seventy pounds or so of furious man in front of her.

  “Do it.”

  Terrible clenched the opposite sides of the chair back, his biceps popping, as the artist drew closer. In his hand he clutched what looked like a small disposable cigarette lighter. What the …?

  He flicked his thumb. Terrible’s fingers tightened, his eyes shut, as the gunpowder packed into his open wound flared in a sharp, cauterizing burst of flame. Chess gave a high-pitched squeal that embarrassed her before it even left her mouth, but it was either lost in the smattering of applause or the men tactfully ignored it. Or they were afraid of what she might do if they made fun of her, which was the more likely. Most people had a highly inflated idea of what kinds of powers she had—unless they were dead, she couldn’t do much to them. Of course, there was no point in clarifying. Why take away that protection?

  She watched as the artist brought a couple of mirrors and angled them so Terrible could take a look, managing to catch a glimpse herself while he adjusted them. Lines, an impression of wings? The mirror moved too quickly for her to tell, but Terrible was apparently pleased. At least he didn’t look any angrier than usual as the artist began smearing antibiotic cream on the wound and applying gauze pads with tape.

  It was strange to see him without a shirt on, though. Chess tended to think of his bowling shirts as armor, and stripped of them he … well, he still looked like a tank.

  A surprisingly attractive tank. Tattoos and scars decorated his bare skin and a patch of thick dark hair spread over his chest and dipped down in a thin line to his waist, but underneath them was solid, sculpted muscle, exquisitely delineated, obviously created from real work and not trips to a gym.

  He glanced at her, then looked again with an eyebrow cocked, and she realized she was frankly staring. Heat rushed to her face as her fingernails suddenly became fascinating to her. It wasn’t until she heard him saying goodbye that she looked up again.

  Together they passed Rego, back out onto the bright street. Terrible had sunglasses, sleek black ones he snapped on the moment they left the doorway.

  “So who? Hunchback? Where Brain go, he still at yours?”

  “No, he took off.” She sketched out the conversations she’d had with him, and how he’d left before he could tell her whatever it was he seemed to be hinting at. “I think he might have seen the people who killed Slipknot. Maybe not the actual murder, but the same people.”

  Terrible leaned against his car and rubbed his chin, sunlight glinting off the spikes of his armband and the thick silver chain he wore on his wrist. “Aye, sound like it to me. I ain’t know where Brain rest. Got any clues?”

  She shook her head.

  “Look like we go see Hunchback after all.” His grin sent a shiver of fear through her body.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “And they crowded into the cities, seeking with their numbers to overwhelm the dead, and found it futile.”

  —The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 120

  The Chevelle’s tires squealed in protest as Terrible yanked the wheel to the right, sliding up in front of a ware house building by the docks in a cloud of dust and the Devil Dogs’ “354.” The car shook when he slammed the door.

  “You seem really worried,” she said, quickly adding “About Brain, I mean,” when he glared at her.

  “I ain’t.”

  “Then why are you so mad?” She rushed to catch up with him as he strode into an alley on the left of the building.

  “Hunchback been told,” he said. “Watch the young one. Get it, Chess? He seen us. We ain’t want nobody else hearing that, aye?”

  “He said he wouldn’t …”

  Terrible wasn’t listening. A small door, covered in cracked paint faded to the dusky color of unripe blueberries, hung slightly open halfway down the wall. Terrible yanked it open and thrust himself inside, with Chess hurrying behind him.

  Again it took her eyes a moment to adjust. By the time she could see again, Terrible was already in action, one meaty hand clasped around the throat of a smaller man who could only be Hunchback, holding him up against a pitted steel pillar in the center of the cavernous room. Chess wrinkled her nose; the ware house smelled like a gymnasium drain.

  “Where Brain?”

  “I … I ain’t …” Hunchback’s eyes, mismatched and huge with fear, rolled in her direction, then back. “Ain’t knowing.”

  Terrible lifted him higher. “What I fucking say to you, Hunchback? Ain’t I say, keep the boy close? Ain’t I say watch him?”

  “Aye … b-but, you ain’t say I can’t punish him, he going out to the—” The sentence ended in a stifled gurgle as Terrible’s fist tightened around his neck.

  “Punishing ain’t sending him out on the street. You ain’t watching, you ain’t doing what you fucking told. You need reminding?”

  His fist connected with Hunchback’s face before the man could open his mouth to answer, snapping Hunchback’s head sideways. Chess willed herself not to move, not to gasp, not to do anything at all as Terrible started methodically beating the shit out of Hunchback.

  She’d seen the results of his anger—of his attention to duty—before, once or twice when someone crossed Bump or owed him money. She’d never seen him in action, the dispassionate way he moved, as though he were crunching numbers at a desk or watching a not particularly interesting film on television. It terrified her. It took her breath away.

  She wasn’t the sole onlooker. Several painfully thin young teenagers of indeterminate sex stood near her, their mouths hanging open as Hunchback’s shaved head moved with the impact of every blow. Blood arced from his mouth and spattered the cement floor, turning black in the layer of dust. Hunchback’s fingers scrabbled feebly at Terrible’s shirt, trying to grab hold as if he was afraid he would fall off the earth if he couldn’t get that fabric in his grip.

  It only lasted a minute or so, but it felt like much longer to Chess—though not, she imagined, as long as it must have felt to Hunchback.

  “What say, Hunchback? You gonna listen next time you’re told?”

  Hunchback gurgled. His head bobbed up and down like a fishing float.

  “So where Brain rest when he ain’t here? Where he hang out?”

  Hunchback shook his head. “Ainno.” The words sounded strained through wet linen. “Ainnever tell me.”<
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  One of the teenagers stepped forward, twisting the hem of its T-shirt enough that Chess could barely tell she was a girl. “Um … Terrible? Sir?”

  “Aye?”

  “Sometime Brain go up Duck place. You knowing it? Sir?”

  “Behind Fifty-third?”

  The girl nodded. Her wide eyes and spiky fire-engine red hair made her look like a junkie Raggedy Ann doll.

  “Aye, I know it.” Terrible dropped Hunchback with an unceremonious thud and straightened up. “Think he there now?”

  She took a hasty step back, as if she thought he might hit her too if she was wrong. “Can’t say for sure, but he go there a lot. Say it safe for him most times.”

  Terrible nodded. “Thanks, chickie. You gotta name?”

  The girl stepped back again and shook her head, sending her ropes of hair flying, but one of the others poked her.

  “Tellim, Loose!”

  The girl glared, then spoke. Her voice squeaked. “Lucy, sir.”

  “Aye, Lucy. Here.” Terrible dug into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled ten-dollar bill. “Get yourself some eats, girl.”

  Lucy hesitated.

  “Goan, take it. I ain’t hurt you. Lookin all starved. Hunchback, you start feeding yon kids, hear me?”

  The bill disappeared from his hand as if by magic as Lucy snatched it away and leapt back, tucking it into her pocket. “Thankee, sir.”

  Terrible nodded. “He ain’t feeding you, you find me. True thing, Lucy girl. Aye?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “Cool.” Terrible gave Hunchback one last nudge with his toe, and turned to Chess. “Let’s get us moving.”

  His bad mood wreathed his face like smoke as he drove through the bright streets without speaking. Chess glanced at him, glanced again, but his eyes stared straight ahead.

  “That was a nice thing you did,” she said finally. “Telling that girl to come to you.”

  He shrugged. “Hunchback ask Bump for work, sayin he gotta take care of them kids. So Bump lets Hunch operate, and Hunch letting them kids starve. Ain’t right. They need food if they working.”

  “I didn’t know Bump was such a philanthropist.”

  He glared at her. Oops.

  “That’s a person who runs charities and—”

  “I know the meaning.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He turned another corner, heading farther into a part of the city Chess wasn’t familiar with. Like most Downside residents she tended to stay in her neighborhood as much as possible. You never knew what you might find on an unfamiliar street.

  Here it was apparently a street fair, like the Market but less organized. The Chevelle rumbled past booths selling scarves and silver, clothing and cell phones, past firecans with spits propped over them. The scent of roasting meat floated in through the window, and Chess realized she was a little hungry.

  She grew even hungrier at the end of the street, as Terrible pulled up in front of a barbeque stand. It was nothing more than a large black barrel grill and a folding table, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d smelled anything so tempting. The wizened man behind the makeshift counter nodded as Terrible stepped out of the car.

  “Aye, T-man,” he said, his voice high but smooth as the motion of his arms as he flipped the long row of meat with a rusty metal spatula. “You eating from me today? What you need?”

  “Maybe later.” Terrible opened Chess’s door—another courtesy she didn’t expect, she’d simply been so busy watching the barbeque man’s sweat-shiny arms move like pistons, she hadn’t thought to get out of the car. “You know Brain? One of Hunchback’s kids?”

  “Aye, I knows him. Seed him earlier, that’s what you askin. He powerful scared. Ain’t in no trouble with you, hoping?”

  “Naw, not with me. Trying to find him though.”

  The barbeque man shrugged. “Headed down the aisle, guess to Duck.” His gaze skittered over Chess’s body, then back to her face, but he said nothing.

  “Thanks.”

  For the second time that day Chess followed him down an alley, but where the first one had been wide and sundrenched, this was so dark it felt more like nighttime. She slipped her sweater back on and checked her watch, surprised to see it was almost six. No wonder she was hungry and restless. She dug in her bag for her pillbox.

  Terrible waited while she swallowed a Cept and washed it down with a slug of water, then started moving again as soon as she screwed the cap back on the bottle.

  “Gonna be dark soon,” he said. “Best be back in the car afore then.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Near Chester, but the other side. Docks that way. Ain’t nothing good come out of them docks at night.”

  She shivered. The alley grew darker as they walked down it, like the sun didn’t dare shine there. Terrible turned left at the end, into a space even more narrow. The walls were lined with chicken wire and damp, moldy rocks, and it smelled like a burned-out urinal.

  She couldn’t see to the end of it, either. It curved away to the right, giving her the bizarre impression that it pinched shut at the end. Her stomach was empty enough that the sweet peace of her pill started seeping through her blood quickly, but it didn’t entirely eliminate her nerves. Nor did having Terrible’s huge body right in front of her. Brain came here? That skinny, pale child made his way through this foul-smelling darkness alone?

  When she was young she’d often thought kids like Brain had it better than she had. She didn’t anymore—two different kinds of misery were still both misery—but when she saw places like this it made her wonder. She seriously doubted Brain had made it to whatever age he was without having his body violated, his bones broken, his spirit crushed. Just like her, but at least she’d known where the threat came from most of the time.

  She wished he hadn’t left her place.

  They took another turn, right this time. Chess started to wonder how long they would be in here, if they would ever get out. If they at least could get out before dark. She had her knife, and she knew Terrible was armed to the teeth, but somehow that didn’t reassure her.

  Finally they reached a makeshift door, a scrap of warped and broken plywood hung in a ragged hole in the wall by straps of leather. Terrible opened it and they stepped inside.

  A single flame gave the only illumination save the fading sun’s rays trying desperately to cut through the grime on the windows. Here and there a panel was broken, and light forced its way in, but was defeated by gloom before it could have an effect.

  Bodies crowded the space, hunched together along the walls and slumped across the floor. Some young, some old, all covered in rags and stiff blankets.

  “What business you got here?” demanded a voice, and Chess turned to face a small man, holding a candle of his own. The light made him look bigger somehow, making his dark skin gleam as if he’d been carved from mahogany. “Ain’t no need for Bump to bring people into my place.”

  “You know Brain?”

  The man—Duck?—didn’t even blink. “Can’t say I do.”

  Terrible didn’t blink either, but he held his hands out, palm up. “Ain’t looking to hurt nobody. Young one might be in trouble, me and the lady just wants to help him out. She got a home for him up her place.”

  “Since when does Bump take an interest?”

  “Ain’t Bump’s interest. The lady’s interest. You wanna keep Brain safe, you tell me where I find him. True thing, Duck.”

  Chess felt like she ought to speak, but the mental pissing contest between the men was too fascinating to interrupt.

  “Gonna need your word on that, Terrible. And who she is.”

  Terrible opened his mouth, but Chess was faster. She liked this man, Duck, and she revised her earlier thought as she took in both him and her surroundings. Brain was definitely luckier than she’d been. It might be a scary place to come to, but it was safe once you arrived. “Cesaria Putnam. I’m a Debunker for the Church.”

  Recognition fl
ared in Duck’s eyes. “You Bump’s Churchwitch.”

  “No, I’m Cesaria, and this has nothing to do with Bump.” Which was kind of a lie, but not enough to keep her from meeting his eyes clean. Whether Bump had gotten her involved or not, Brain still would have seen what happened at the airport and would still be in danger because of it.

  “Brain over there,” Duck said after staring at her for a long moment. “In the corner, in the back.”

  At his words a tiny gasp sounded; a flurry of movement caught her eye, and she saw the back of Brain’s head disappear through a dingy flap in the far wall.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “From the cemeteries they came, from the battlefields long overgrown, from the forests and the lakes … the forgotten dead walked again and sought vengeance.”

  —The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 18

  Her heart threatened to pound out of her chest and her legs felt like someone had tied lead weights to them by the time they stopped running. It was impossible. Brain had disappeared into the twisted warren of alleys and buildings, and as darkness set in Chess almost started not to care. It was late, she hadn’t slept, the line of Nip had long since worn off, and she was starving and cold. Surely Brain would be safe for one more day.

  Terrible shook his head when his breathing slowed. “We keep looking, you want.”

  “I don’t know how we’d find him.”

  “Neither me, but we keep looking if you want.”

  “Shit, if you don’t know where to find him, how would I?”

  He smiled. “Ain’t you got them witchy skills?”

  “Oh, of course. Let me just send some magic dust into the air to find him.”

  His laugh didn’t sound as creaky as it had before. “Aye, you do that one. Like to see it myself.”

  They stood for another minute, letting their blood cool. Chess had no idea where they actually were. None of the buildings looked familiar and there were no street signs anywhere.

  “Do with some eats, Chess? We ain’t as away from my car as it seem.”

  Dinner with Terrible? Well, why not. They’d probably get faster service than she could get on her own, and she didn’t feel like being alone again quite yet.