Unholy Ghosts Read online

  “I think you have something that belongs to me,” Randy said. “Quite a few things, in fact, starting with my birth certificate and ending with my amulet. Drop the papers and tell me where the amulet is, please.”

  The papers fell back to the bed with a quiet rippling sound. “It’s in my bag. Over there by the closet.”

  “Oh, no. You go get it. I’m not taking my eyes away from you and whoever this thug you’re hanging out with is. Not after what he did to Doyle.”

  “So you ran into Doyle, huh.”

  “Get the bag. Move slow.”

  She slid her foot to her left, inching sideways across the carpet. Terrible stared at her, his face immobile but his eyes a little wider than usual, a little more intense. What?

  Randy’s hand slid over her shoulder to grip the back of her neck. “I don’t think I want you too far away from me,” he said. “And yeah, I ran into Doyle. He told me you were asking about Goody Tremmell—like she’d have anything to do with this, please—and about the Lamaru. Why don’t you mind your own fucking business? Didn’t you learn anything from what happened to that kid you were hanging around with?”

  Brain had seen the ritual … From the back Randy and Doyle could almost pass for each other, especially in the dark. Especially when the witness was a terrified young boy. No wonder Brain had run, and run again when he saw her coming for him. He’d thought she was involved. He’d died thinking she’d given him up.

  She felt sick, tried not to show it. There’d be time for that later. And Goody Tremmell—Randy must have broken into the filing cabinet, taken that invoice, and tossed it away, while he was hanging out in the Church earlier, intercepting phone calls and such. Not the Goody at all. He must have given her the key ring, too; a bribe to make sure she didn’t skip his place in the queue? She thought of offering a silent apology to Goody Tremmell, but remembered the snotty look on her face when she’d seen Chess behind her desk and decided not to. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. “What I don’t understand is how you got mixed up with them in the first place.”

  “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t, would you? You thought I was an idiot. Just like everybody else. Poor Randy, he’s a lousy Debunker, he’s a fool … Whatever. You don’t know anything. The Lamaru do, and so do I.”

  The pride in his voice, even after everything that had happened, made her wince. “Randy …”

  “No, don’t ‘Randy’ me, don’t you fucking ‘Randy’ me! The Lamaru needed me, they promised me—they promised me everything. And they gave it to me, too. When they take over, I’ll be a leader. I’ll be in charge.” His defiance sent fresh waves of terror pumping through her blood. Nothing in the world was more dangerous than someone who believed they were about to get everything they wanted—someone who believed in the empty promises of madmen.

  Without looking away, Chess knelt slowly by her bag and reached for it with her stiff and aching right hand. It took her two tries to close her fingers over the tongue of the zipper.

  Randy glared at her. “First you take my case, just wave those miniscule tits at Elder Griffin and get handed the case that should have been mine, then you poke around that airport and power up my ghost. We had him, don’t you understand? We had him under control, until you did that!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, because it seemed to be what he wanted. What was she supposed to say?

  Her stiff fingers closed over the cloth-wrapped amulet. When she handed this to him he would kill her. Slit her throat, probably, then be ready to stab Terrible when Terrible leapt for him. And it would look like Ereshdiran did it somehow, or at least that’s what Randy would say, and why would anyone doubt him? The regular police didn’t have jurisdiction in Church matters at all.

  “When the Lamaru are in charge, things will be different. No more laws regulating what magic people are allowed to do and what they’re allowed to believe in. No more lies, no more answers to questions that shouldn’t have them. Look around you, Chessie. Do you honestly think this is a good world we live in? Do you honestly think it’s good for people to obey laws out of fear, and to know exactly what happens when they die, and to believe in nothing but themselves and power? There’s no mystery. There’s no hope. It’s like a little hell, this world.” Randy shook his head, his lips curling.

  “And the Lamaru want to put the mystery back, the hope. And they needed me to help them do it, me and my skills. Me, to show them how to get into the City, me to help raise the thief. What the fuck were you doing at that airport, anyway?”

  “How did you get involved with them?” She wasn’t about to give him an answer, and she didn’t think he would notice. Her thinking might have been fuzzy from drugs sometimes, but Randy had left sanity behind a while ago.

  For a minute Chess felt sorry for him. He was right. He had been something of a laughingstock at Church, like a mascot nobody took seriously. Then all of the sudden he had a family, and a powerful magic group wanting to learn from him, promising him power and wealth and respect … and now he couldn’t escape. They would kill him if he tried, and he knew it. Behind his boasts she heard the panic in his voice.

  As for his comments about the world they lived in … she couldn’t even consider that. Such thoughts were heresy, and the Church had given her more hope than she’d ever known could exist. Maybe he had a point about answers, but then, if the answers were there, didn’t people have a right to them?

  She glanced at Terrible again. This time he moved, flexing the fingers of his right hand. With his arms folded he was pointing to her right, where Randy crouched.

  Where he crouched. He was only balancing on the balls of his feet. It would be simple to knock him off balance. If she could hit him—he had her right hand crowded, but she couldn’t use her right anyway. It was too difficult to bend her fingers. Her left, though, if she could swing around and catch him with a left, she might be able to knock him far enough away that Terrible could get him.

  She blinked, hoping he read her agreement in it, and tensed her arms.

  “I met one of them at the Sp—just give me my amulet.”

  “I can help you, Randy.” Her mind whirred. So the Lamaru were meeting—or at least recruiting—at the Bankhead? Where did their money come from? She looked up, tried to catch his eyes with hers, but he refused to let her. “I can help you, we can get rid of them together, the Church will understand, they’ll—”

  “Shut up!” His free hand raised, preparing to strike. Terrible made a sound low in his throat, but she didn’t dare look at him, and Randy dropped his hand back to her neck.

  “I can help—”

  “You don’t get it, do you, you stupid bitch? I don’t want your help. All this—all this mess, it’s your fault, and they’re holding me responsible for it, and if you don’t give me that amulet they’ll kill me, too, not just—” He snapped his mouth shut, like he was about to reveal a secret. Like she didn’t already know the Lamaru wanted her dead. “Just give it to me. They need me. I can talk to them, I can tell them it was an accident and you don’t know anything.”

  Yeah. She believed that one. She drew in a shaky breath. “Okay. Here it is.”

  She twisted her upper body, crowding him with her right side as she pretended she was going to give him the amulet with her right hand. He was holding the knife in his right hand, so had to take his left off her neck to make an awkward attempt to collect the amulet.

  She’d never been very good with her fists, much preferring weapons, but she made do with what she had, driving her left across her body. It felt unnatural and strange, but it worked. Her fist connected with his eye, knocking him backward. Chess let the amulet fall from her hand and grabbed her knife, driving it forward, but Randy was too fast. He caught her hand and squeezed.

  The butt of the knife slammed into her injured palm. Pain clouded her vision. She screamed and rolled sideways, trying to pull away from him, but he squeezed harder. Through a haze of tears she saw his face, his lips twisted in rage. He raised his
right hand. Moonlight hit the edge of the blade.

  Terrible grabbed him, lifted him, threw him. Randy hit the wall with a room-shaking thud and fell back to the floor. It would have been comical if he hadn’t sprung back up so quickly.

  He made a sound somewhere between a howl and a scream and lifted the knife, but Terrible was too fast. He shoved himself forward, one hand grabbing Randy’s wrist while his big shoulders pushed Randy back to the wall again. He slammed Randy’s hand against it hard enough to crack the plaster. The knife fell to the floor.

  Randy’s left hand pounded at Terrible’s back, stopping only when the tip of Terrible’s blade hit his throat.

  “What action you want?”

  “We’ll bring him with us,” Chess said. “I think I saw some rope downstairs. We’ll tie him up, and he can come along and send the Dreamthief back.”

  “You can’t send him back,” Randy said. “Don’t you understand? Without the amulet we don’t have the control we had. He’s getting stronger, you saw what he did to my mom down there. We have him trapped, but he’s breaking free, I need the amulet to—”

  The lights snapped off. All the lights, leaving them standing alone with the warm darkness breathing around them. Her skin burned and itched along the lines of her tattoos.

  Randy’s whisper crackled like dead leaves. “He’s here.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “You cannot defeat the dead. Only the Church can do so, and through training, Church employees.”

  —The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 5

  The amulet had fallen to the floor in the struggle. Chess knelt and ran her fingers over the carpet. Her back felt like someone had painted a target on it. Where was Ereshdiran? In front of her, those long stained-ivory teeth exposed? Behind her, about to summon enough power to slip a noose around her neck, to slit her throat?

  The darkness was so complete, not a hint of light anywhere. Too dark. Dark like the mouth of a predator.

  Randy’s sobs echoed in the room. “He’s here, he’s here, please find the amulet, Chessie hurry …”

  It was hard to focus on anything, even with adrenaline coursing through her body. Suddenly she was sleepy, so relaxed and sleepy, and it was so dark and the carpet was soft and thick. She could lie down here, curl up into a warm cozy ball and take a nap, she could …

  “Stay awake!” she yelled, but her voice was drowned out by shattering glass. Behind her? The mirror, the dresser mirror. Ereshdiran must have smashed it. He’d gained so much strength since she saw him before, he could kill Randy, he could kill Terrible—would he kill her now? Did he still need her, with all the power he drew from the sleepers downstairs? The sleepers in the whole neighborhood?

  Fear helped her eyes stay open as she fumbled into her bag, her movements clumsy and painful. The speed was in there, the Baggie Lex gave her.

  “Chess?”

  “Stay awake, Terrible, stay awake, just stay where you were, don’t move!”

  Randy screamed. Something warm and wet splattered over Chess’s face, in her hair. Blood. She didn’t dare try to wipe it away, not when she needed both her hands to hunt for the two items that might keep her alive.

  “Chess!”

  The screaming continued, turning into sobs. She heard them moving, heard the bed creak as they ran into it. Something brushed against her hair but she had no idea if it was human or not. And all the while her eyelids got heavier, the fuzzy comfort of sleep slid into her head.

  Ereshdiran appeared in front of her, his luminous face only inches from hers, his mouth open in a crooked, shrieking grin. Chess screamed and lost the Baggie just as her fingers touched it. It disappeared again into the depths of her bag.

  Terrible grunted. Randy screamed. Cold wind blew across the back of her neck. The Dreamthief was playing with them, playing with her. Something sliced at the back of her left hand, just a kiss from the blade, a portent of what would come. She gasped and tried to ignore the feel of her own blood dribbling from the wound.

  She found the Baggie, yanked it out, slid her fingernail into the seal with shaking hands. She had to stay awake, had to stay awake long enough …

  The floor shook. The whole house shook. Ereshdiran’s power, strong the last time she’d seen him here, now sparked off him. He could bring this place down on them, would do it if she wasn’t fast enough—and the bastard would use some of her own power to do it. She could feel him pulling at her.

  Terrible roared her name but she didn’t answer, focusing on the powder against her hand. No hairpin, no key, there wasn’t time. She scooped up as much as she could under her fingernail—not much, she kept her nails fairly short—and brought it to her face, hoping she wouldn’t miss.

  She did. Something smashed across the room—a lamp crashing, she thought—and she ended up poking herself in the eye with a nailful of speed. A gasp escaped her throat, her eye felt like a bee had stung it, but it woke her up enough to try again while tears streamed down her face. All the while the room got colder and colder, so cold her toes were numb. Had she escaped after all? Was she asleep, in a dream, deep in the bowels of the thief?

  Another crash, a thud. Randy screaming her name, sounding very far away. He’d been right beside her, where was he now? She ignored it, falling to her knees, her neck retreating between her shoulders as she tried again.

  This time she made it. It wasn’t a big bump but it was enough. Her heart rate increased, her eyes snapped open.

  “Terrible? Terrible, here.” She waved her hand in the air, trying to find him, and finally closed her fingers around one thick calf. It moved. His hand found hers, and she pressed the Baggie into it. “We have to stay awake.”

  She heard the plastic rustle, heard him inhale once, twice. Then his hand squeezed her arm and he lifted her to her feet, pulling her against him as she lost her balance and they both hit the wall. His shirt was wet, with sweat or blood she didn’t know.

  “No! Noooo!” Randy’s scream turned into a gurgle, a horrible choking sound, then stopped dead. Chess’s skin crawled. She found her flashlight, knowing it wouldn’t work, and switched it on.

  It did work. The beam fell on Randy’s face, on his wide, staring eyes and the blood still trickling from the gaping hole where his throat should have been. She barely had time to take it in when the Dreamthief shoved the piece of mirror he’d used to kill Randy into the flashlight’s beam, throwing the light back at her, blinding her.

  The light fell from her hand as Terrible grabbed her, his fingers painfully tight around her arm, ripping her out of her stupor and shoving her toward where the door had been. She couldn’t see a thing, the white spots in front of her eyes worse than the darkness.

  “The amulet, we have to have—”

  “I got it, just go!” Still holding her, he flung himself forward. She heard something thunk into the plaster where they’d just been as they fell through the door and onto the landing.

  Pictures flew from the walls as Chess and Terrible tore down the stairs, in what could have been a run but was more like a tumble. She twisted her ankle at the bottom but did not let herself stop, feeling the Dreamthief behind them, knowing there was no escape.

  They burst out into the shadowy night and started running across the lawn, heading for Terrible’s car on the next block. Probably not the safest place to be, but all Chess could think to do was try and get away. Get away, get to the airport, get the ritual done. She had no choice. Even the spells and wards at the Church might not be strong enough to protect her, not with the thief connected to her through blood.

  Her chest felt ready to explode by the time they were halfway up the street. She didn’t dare look back. There was no point in looking back. He was after them, of course he was after them, they had the amulet. The one thing that might be able to control him, and the one thing that would draw him to her.

  “Give me the amulet,” she managed to gasp.

  He didn’t ask questions, but pressed it into her palm and closed her fin
gers around it.

  Ereshdiran darted past them, a black streak in the orange streetlight glow. Chess sucked as much air as she could into her aching lungs and said the generic Banishing words she’d learned five years before, the first words of power any Church employee learned. “Arcranda beliam dishager!”

  They didn’t stop to see if it worked. It probably hadn’t, and it certainly hadn’t worked permanently. But if it bought them a few minutes, enough time to get in the car and get moving, enough time to keep Banishing him until she could start the ritual, it would be worth it.

  They reached the car, finally, yanking the doors open and throwing themselves inside. Terrible had the keys in the ignition and the engine started before she’d managed to sit up straight, and they peeled away in a cloud of heavy exhaust, the rear end of the car fishtailing as it leapt away from the curb.

  The Chevelle ate up the highway, sliding in and out of traffic with a low, contented purr. Chess stared out the window, watching other cars disappear behind them, until her hands stopped shaking.

  The first thing she did was another bump, a proper one this time. The second was to drink half her water and hand it to Terrible to finish.

  “You right, Chess? You get hurt?”

  “No, I’m okay. You?”

  He shrugged. Light from the dash caught on the shard of mirror protruding from his left arm.

  “You’re not, you got stabbed—”

  “Ain’t so bad. I been got worse.”

  “Oh? Like what?” She just wanted him to talk, about anything. Just wanted to hear his calm, low voice like gravel poured over the rough ground of her terror.

  “Aye. Dame I know bit me once.”

  She laughed in spite of herself, a surprised laugh like a hiccup. “You mean you let a girl hurt you?”

  “Some dames I let do whatany they want.”

  She had no idea how to reply to that; her face heated. He was joking, had to be. She would never forget the look on his face at Trickster’s, how pissed off he’d been, how he’d just given up on her.