City of Ghosts (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

We know anything can be possible through the use of magic. But just because it is possible does not mean it is acceptable; the possible and the moral do not always intersect, and that is Truth.

—
The Book of Truth
, Veraxis, Article 873

He pushed ahead of her, bent over deep. The space surrounding them was a tunnel in the most basic sense of the word: an empty tube cut through dirt, scraped away with shovels and picks and hands, hands she could feel with every crouching step. Hands that wanted to touch her. Hands like snails sliding out of the dirt to grab—

She stopped short. Pressed her own hands into the dirt. Even infused with black magic, it was still dirt, still pure and natural, still a source of strength and power. That power was the Church’s wellspring, the source of all its magic and its dominion over the ghosts who wanted to destroy humanity out of simple, unthinking hatred; just touching it, digging her fingers into it, centered her.

But oh, yeah, the grime and darkness were there. Anger and blood and … what was—

“You right? Ain’t dig spendin all day in here.”

She looked up at his whisper and saw him several feet in front of her, half-turned, still bent over. This was uncomfortable for her; it must be awful for him, with his height.

“Yeah, yeah, it just—Something feels wrong.”

“Ain’t none of this right, aye?”

“But this feels …
wrong
wrong, you know what I mean? Not just like black magic or murder or whatever. It feels like, like the people who dug this are
wrong
. Something’s wrong with them.”

“Like they fucked in them heads?”

“No, it’s—Well, yeah, but … I don’t know. I can’t explain it.” She pulled her hands back from the dirt, brushed them against each other.

“Wanna head back?”

She looked up sharply. Yes, she wanted to head back; no, she didn’t want to admit it. “No. Go on.”

He shrugged and kept on; she noticed he carefully avoided touching the hard-packed mud on either side of them, and that when on one occasion his shoulder brushed it, he jerked away from it.

She didn’t bother to ask. And honestly she didn’t think she could find her voice even if she wanted to. With every step the feeling of
wrong
increased. She caught herself rubbing her arms, trying to calm her goosebumped skin. Trying to still her shivering, trying to soothe the turmoil in her mind.

It was no use. She couldn’t seem to calm down. Couldn’t seem to focus on anything.

Terrible stopped short; she bumped into him and hardly noticed it. He glanced back at her, gestured for her to look.

The tunnel opened to a cavernous space, a space like nothing she’d ever seen in her life and hoped never to see again.

At first she thought they were back above ground. Bright light dazzled her eyes, made them sting and water; it took a few seconds to realize it wasn’t daylight but candlelight she was seeing, that candles climbed the dirt walls in dizzying columns. Stretched across the ceiling were long crisscrossing strands of rope; from the ropes hung bones and skulls, scarves, ratskins, and twisty lines of feathers bound together. The same ropes dangled down the walls, between the candle rows, between shelves of bone and wood, between what looked almost like beds.

Small beds. Narrow beds.

More skulls littered the floor. Some of them were human.

The stench of rotting meat filled her nose; bile and saliva filled her mouth. This wasn’t a home, wasn’t someone’s cavelike hideaway. These were the hidden people, the ones so secret and reviled even Downside spoke their names as curses. This was a charnelhouse, a slaughterhouse.

Not the Lamaru, at least not if what she knew about Downside legend was true. Something much, much worse.

“We have to get out of here,” she started, grabbing his arm and starting to turn back. “We have to get out of here now, right now—”

Too late. Something scuttled along the wall behind the ropes; boards in crooked rows created a kind of hall outside the main open space, and something … something tiny and misshapen ran behind it, its feet slapping the hard-packed dirt. They’d been seen.

Terrible’s hand went to his knife. “We run they follow, aye?”

She nodded, her teeth sinking into her lip so hard she drew blood. They could run—maybe. But their journey to this cave had been rough, a long hard slog over rocks and dirt. She didn’t think they could get back much faster, and she had absolutely no doubt that the inhabitants of this little corner of hell could.

More movement over their heads; a small body clambering along the rope like a monkey. A very small body. A child.

“Ain’t see another way out.”

Her skin prickled everywhere, every gaze that hit her registering like another shock. So many of them, she felt them, their choking sick hunger clouding her thoughts and her vision. The door they’d come through had been hidden by glamour. She bet the exit—if there was one—was hidden as well.

They really didn’t have time for this shit, but neither did they have a choice. She fisted her hands, took a deep breath. Found her power, deep inside, let it flare while she scanned the walls. Ignore the movements, the unmistakable fact that more bodies twisted past behind the boards, that harsh dry whispers crossed the bone-littered space, and find the exit. Find the door.

“There.” She pointed at it; they didn’t have time for her to explain. “There, go, run—”

His big hand wrapped hers, held it tight as he set off across the floor. At the same time the people behind the boards came out, ran for them.

Oh shit they’re wrong they’re so
wrong—

Twisted bodies, handless, deformed. Gaping mouths devoid of teeth, bloody smiles with too many of them. Leering foreheads reflecting the candlelight, tiny eyes set too close over humping crooked noses. Reaching for them, brushing her clothes, her hair—

She stumbled; Terrible yanked her back up, kept running. Around her wails sounded, voices cackling and screaming. Steel glinted as knives were raised.

The door wasn’t far now, she saw it, a plain door—a real door—high over steps cut in the dirt. It was a star she reached for as she pulled Terrible to the side and let him draw her along faster than she could go on her own, her lungs threatening to explode from breathlessness and hopelessness and the aching pressure of madness and twisted inhuman humanity.

A figure stepped in front of the door. They were halfway up when she saw it was Maguinness, smiling gently, his arms folded before him.

He raised a pale, long-fingered hand; the noise around them ceased, left only the ringing of her ears.

“I know you.” His gaze ran up and down Terrible’s body; Terrible’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly around hers. “Work for the lord, you do.”

“Aye.”

Now that beatific smile, horrible in its emptiness, fell on her. “And you work for the other one. Why have you bothered my children?”

She cast her eyes away from him, couldn’t keep looking at his waxy visage. Above him toads danced on strings, rows and rows of them. Guarding the door. Guarding the inhabitants of this room. His children?

His
children
. She gagged, tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a cough. The glint in his eye told her she hadn’t fooled him.

Terrible spoke. “Looking for aught else, is all.”

“Oh, no … no, I don’t think so. Methinks you wouldn’t have entered here by mistake. You, witch. You destroyed my door.”

“I’m sorry” was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter it, much as she knew she should. Terrible had calculated their chances pretty well; between the two of them they could handle a lot, but an army of inbreeds—quite probably cannibalistic inbreeds, if the skulls on the floor were anything to go by—was too much. Their odds of fighting their way out of this wouldn’t attract even the most desperate lost-cause gambling addict.

“I thought it was connected to something else,” she said. “The Church will pay damages if you file a claim.”

Not that she expected him to. But perhaps mentioning the Church would cause him to rethink whatever murder-and-devour plans he was formulating in that rat’s-nest head of his.

Of course she didn’t really expect that either. But it was worth a try.

He blinked, slowly. Like a toad. “The Church … ah. I see. Followed them, you did? The other witches.”

The Lamaru? “Is there something you want to tell me about them?”

“I do not believe I do, no.”

“But you know who they are. You attacked them last night.” And he was smiling, a smile she didn’t like at all; it raised nervous prickles up her spine.

“I know many things. I know they have dark plans that should be stopped. I do not know what they are.”

“Then why are you—”

“I see them. Bothering me. Bothering my children. You waste our time, witch. Catch them. That you should, I do know.”

“Why? What did they do to you?” Shit, she shouldn’t be doing this, not now. Not when his horrible “children” licked their lips on the steps below her and she could feel their hungry gazes on her body.

Their hungry gazes … his children. Had the Lamaru killed them? Were his children the genetically altered bastards that that report described? If they truly were inbred, the result of years of it … ugh. “They bothered your children?”

His eyebrows disappeared into the tangled mass of his hair. “Said it, did I not?”

“How did they bother them? Is that why you did what you did?”

“Not your business.”

“I think it is.” Bells rang in her head, deafening bells. If the Lamaru had killed Maguinness’s children … that would be reason enough for revenge, right?

And now he knew who she was. Knew she knew about him, knew she was—however peripherally—involved. Crossfire could be a real bitch. Her skin went colder than it already was.

But he clearly wasn’t going to tell her anything, and she didn’t have the authority to change that at the moment. Sure, she could ask Terrible to step in, but even if things between them hadn’t been totally fucked up she didn’t know if he’d be too eager to do the stepping in while a horde of inbred lunatics filed their teeth into points behind them.

And either way, she had to account for the information. She was well within her rights to be out wandering the streets with anyone she chose, and to stumble across Maguinness’s hidey-hole in the process, but to actually bring him in for questioning she’d need Lauren. Unless she could get him to talk on his own. To come in on his own.

“We can stop them, you know.” She looked him dead in the eyes, wished she hadn’t when the contact jolted down her spine. How was he so powerful? “If you tell me what you know, we can—”

“I don’t think it’s your business,” he repeated.

He stood before her; she hadn’t seen him move, but there he was, on the next step. Closer than he’d been a moment ago. The stink of him was almost as bad as the realization of what sort of family he was raising; sweat and smoke and greasy, bloody filth.

His eyes were worlds in his face now, swirling orbs of color and darkness. “Yes,” he whispered. “Look at me. Let me see … let me see into you, little witch.”

He grabbed her arm, flipped it over so her wrist was exposed. She gasped. A stab of pain flew up it at his touch, but she couldn’t look away, couldn’t focus on anything else. Terrible’s hand on hers tightened even more; she felt it without it actually registering in her mind, like watching him squeeze someone else’s hand.

“Hmm.” His fingers crawled spiderlike over the black scar of her Binding while his gaze kept hers trapped. “Interesting.”

His hand closed over the scar like a vise. Power shot through it, searing power that stole her voice, stole her thoughts.

“Arteru niska,”
he whispered. Her arm hummed, her tattoos crawled and itched. She tried to scream but nothing came out; he’d taken her breath along with her will, and her vision went black around the edges.

In that darkness, between the red spots exploding before her eyes, she saw bright white lights form and spread, blotting out everything until all she saw was blinding, hateful white—

Pain slammed into her, exploded from her wrists into her chest and her head, breaking the spell. Her entire body shook; she tried to pull away from him, from his grip wet with her blood, oh, shit, her blood drooling from the Binding wound, dripping out, and his children started screaming.

More light flashed into her eyes: Terrible’s knife at Maguinness’s throat.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.

Through the haze of pain and blood she saw Maguinness glance from her to his children and back to Terrible.

“Aye, they might,” Terrible said quietly. “Too late for you, though.”

“I could help you, little witch,” Maguinness said to her. “Could break that Bind and set you free. We could help each other. Yes, we could.”

She swallowed. “Tell me why you’re fighting them. What you know.”

He shrugged, dropped her wrist. The energy receded.

“Do not come here again,” he said. “Leave us be. We do not need the Church interfering in our lives.”

He stepped to the side.

It took two tries to get her rubbery legs to climb the stairs, but the door opened easily enough when they got to the top. Fresh, damp air—what could be considered fresh in Downside, anyway—flooded her lungs, her face. The rain had stopped.

Before the door closed behind them she took one last look back, and wished desperately that she hadn’t.

Maguinness stood there in the shrinking space between the door and the jamb, watching them go.

He was licking her blood off his fingers.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The Church’s blessing did not come without conditions, for nothing ever does, but the condition was thus: That the people know and accept Truth, and live in it, and be guided by the Church.

—
The Book of Truth
, Origins, Article 700

Lauren’s red sports car lay in wait across the street from her building, a big shiny reprimand that Chess hadn’t called her that day.

And she should have, she really should have. After what Lauren had been through the night before it was really inexcusable; she wasn’t exactly a Lauren fan, but she should have called to check on her. Score one major insensitivity point for Chess.

“Shit,” she said, breaking the silence. And it had been silent, the entire drive back; with the Supersuckers playing through the speakers, but without a single word exchanged between herself and Terrible. “Just what I—Oh, shit, stop!”

He did, so suddenly and effectively that only the seatbelt kept her from hitting the dash. “What?”

“That’s Lauren’s—She can’t see you. She can’t see your car. Quick, back up or something.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“The other night, in the lot. She asked me about you and I told her I didn’t know you, she saw your car, if she sees you she’ll know I—”

The car raced backward, slid against the curb neatly as a magnet attaching itself to a refrigerator door.

“Thanks. I just—”

“I dig it. Don’t want her knowin you know me. Gave her the lie.”

“But—” No, he couldn’t be thinking that, could he? “Only because I didn’t want to drag you into it, I mean, she thought you were involved, you know? Wanted to question you. And I didn’t think you’d want that.”

He nodded, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

Shit.

“I don’t know if you want to call me later or something …” She swallowed. “I don’t have your number anymore, I guess. I tried to call you last night but you changed your number.”

Long pause. “Aye.”

She wasn’t quite sure what to say; with every passing second she became more and more convinced that she should be sure, that she should say something, but nothing came to mind. Nothing appropriate, anyway.

“Chess.”

“Yeah?”

He lit a cigarette, leaned back and blew smoke at the ceiling. Watched it. “Sorry. True thing.”

“Sorry—why? I mean, because you changed your number, or—”

“You know why. Shit. I ain’t meant to—”

“But you know what? You did. You still
did
, Terrible, you can’t sit there and tell me you don’t still want—”

“Wanting ain’t fuckin trusting, aye?”

“Right. All those months, and now you can’t trust me just because of one thing, one thing that—”

“One—You got any fuckin thought what you done to me? Any fuckin thought what seein you under that—Fuck. Trusting you, an you lyin every fuckin day.”

“But I didn’t! The only thing I lied about was seeing him—”

“Fucking
him. A
lot
, aye?” His voice dragged sharp icicles across her skin. Her temper roared.

“And who were
you
fucking? How many? Am I supposed to believe—”

“Weren’t fuckin nobody wanted to see you dead. Not like you. Weren’t playin you a lead-on game, neither, lyin about wanting you, like you lied—”

“But I didn’t lie! I just—I couldn’t handle it, you know—you
know
this, I told you all this, on the bridge, that I just needed—”

“Ain’t needed time with Lex, aye? Months you with him, an—”

“Because I didn’t fucking care about him!” Shit. That came out too loud; the car itself seemed to shrink away from her voice. “I didn’t and I still don’t, he was a friend that’s all, that’s all it ever was—”

“Oh, aye, you fuck all your friends? Or just the ones look like he—” He snapped his mouth shut, looked away.

Oh
. She should have known. And she supposed if she were honest with herself, she had. But she never thought about the way Terrible looked, at least not that way. He hadn’t been ugly to her for months; he’d gone from just being a face she was familiar with to being a face she loved to look at, a face that made her … happy.

Who gave a shit what anyone else saw when they looked at him, when they saw the crooked, many-times-broken nose, or the scars, or the jutting brow or thick jaw and heavy muttonchops? She knew what she saw, and that was all that mattered. Knew what was behind those hard dark eyes, and wanted it more than anything.

She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t aware of his insecurities, the few he had. She knew he was embarrassed by his lack of education, that he was continually and vocally impressed by hers. Knew he thought he wasn’t very smart, despite all evidence to the contrary. That he didn’t see himself as being good for much more than muscle.

But somehow she’d never thought those insecurities were serious, that they applied to her or that he would think … Shit. What a dumbass she was. He’d even told her himself, words whose significance she hadn’t seen at the time:
Only reason any dame want a baby off me is money
. The night she’d met his daughter, the night she’d kissed him and he’d told her what he really wanted from her. She hadn’t thought much about those words then, but sitting in the car, hearing them in her head again …

How would she feel if she were him and saw her with Lex? Handsome Lex with his perfect features and his clever smile and his arrogance? Some smart fucking Churchwitch she was.

“I don’t care what he looks like,” she said carefully, waiting for another explosion. “I don’t care because I lo—I like the way you look, so much more, I—”

“Fuck.” He flicked his smoke out the window, lit another. “Don’t—ain’t even can trust nothing you say, don’t know why I even botherin to give you the chatter, wasting my fuckin time. You gave me the lies then, you give me em now, lied for months behind my back, and now—”

“And if you didn’t give a shit about me that wouldn’t bother you.” Her throat felt like someone had rammed a steel pipe down it. She had to get out of the car. Had to get out, immediately, before she said or did something else she would regret—another regret to add to a lifetime full of them.

But the words flowed from her mouth anyway, before she could stop them. “If you really, honestly didn’t care about me and didn’t still—then it wouldn’t bother you, you wouldn’t care, you wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me. Yeah, I lied and I shouldn’t have and it was lousy of me and I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, I never wanted that, and I wish so bad I could take it all back, okay? But we both know which one of us is lying now and it’s not me. So you call me when you want to actually talk to me and not just yell at me or tell me what a shitty person I am. I already … yeah, I already know that, okay?”

She slammed the door on his reply and strode away with her head high, her shoulders set; grateful he could only see her back, that he couldn’t see the tears streaking down her face.

She hadn’t really had a choice when it came to telling Lauren about Maguinness, not after he’d almost burned them both to death and staged a bar brawl in the slaughterhouse parking lot. Finding out if those body parts did indeed belong to members of Maguinness’s family—or rather, confirming that they did—was important. Talking to him was even more important. She hadn’t been able to pull rank with Terrible there, but a Squad member made a difference, and they were so fucking close to a solution.

He could find the Lamaru if they ventured into Downside; he obviously had some kind of connection with them. Maybe a connection they could use. Hell, maybe if the Lamaru knew their enemy was working with the Church, they’d back off. Not likely, but possible.

Maguinness was scary powerful; he’d make a terrifying enemy. She’d sure as fuck clear out if he was after her.

At least that’s what she wanted to do. What she would have done if she hadn’t been who and what she was. Instead she stood at Lauren’s side at two in the morning, hidden by the darkness of broken streetlights at the corner of Ninetieth and Foster, getting ready to break into his place and have a look around.

The meeting at the Church earlier had been short and sweet, her worst fears come to pass. No more psychopomps, not until the Lamaru were caught. She was the only Debunker currently working. The others were on indefinite leave until the problem was solved, until every skull in the Church stores had been tested and cleared.

She’d never realized before how much she counted on her psychopomp, how much she counted on her ability to send ghosts to the City. Without it she felt vulnerable, exposed; her belief in the Church and its magic, which she’d once thought unbreakable, lay in shards around her feet. It felt like she was struggling to save a life already gone, and the Lamaru had done that, and hatred burned hot and strong in her chest.

Her Hand of Glory twitched in her palm. Reading her energy, she assumed; she certainly wasn’t feeling very calm, despite the four Cepts she’d managed to down in the Stop Shop bathroom.

It wasn’t just the rage, or the vague sense that even both of them and their Hands wouldn’t be enough to enchant Maguinness and his family to sleep. Wasn’t the fear of what he might do to them if he caught them. Lauren had a gun; if it came to trouble, they’d blast their way out of there.

It was the memories of earlier that refused to leave her alone. His skin against hers. His voice in her ear. His hair between her fingers, his body under her palms. Sense memory, so strong she almost gasped, overwhelmed her; her muscles clenched.

“What is wrong with you?” Lauren finished loading a fresh clip into her gun and tucked it into the shoulder holster beneath her jacket. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

At least the comment gave all that hot blood somewhere else to go—not that she liked knowing her face was as red as Lauren’s hair. “I’m fine. Just … I really think we ought to call for some backup or something.”

“Why? You said he was a creepy guy with a few creepy kids. Hell, he should be glad we’re here, if he’s really fighting the Lamaru. We can beat them for him and make sure they leave him alone.”

“Yeah, but …” Damn, and damn again, and fuck for good measure. She’d had to downplay her encounter with Maguinness in the retelling, not wanting Lauren to know Terrible had been there—so completely leaving out the physical threat stuff—and especially not wanting her to know how Maguinness had read her Binding marks. That he’d read
her
, knew who she was, that the case could be compromised. If they booted her off it, she’d have to give the money back.

It hadn’t even come close to occurring to her that Lauren would want to bounce on over to his place that very night without bringing any more of the Squad. Without even calling Elder Griffin first to let him know what was going on. Chess had envisioned a full-on invasion of his disgusting underground charnelhouse, not two women—no matter how skilled or well armed—popping in to ask a few questions.

“But what?”

“I just think it would be a good idea to call someone,” Chess finished. “That’s all.”

“Why, are you scared?”

“Hell, no.” Hell, yes. But she’d rather slit her wrists than admit it, especially to Lauren.

“Do you normally call someone when you enter your subjects’ homes?”

“No.”

“Then we don’t need to now. Come on. I want to get something to eat after this.”

“We already—Never mind.” Apparently Lauren liked to eat a lot. Fine.

Lauren pulled her own Hand out of a little leather case inside her bag and set it on the pavement while she dug out a stub of white candle to place in the palm. Chess already had hers ready to go.

Lauren was being awfully … nice, though, wasn’t she? After what happened the night before and her insistence that Chess become her counselor and very best friend?

Whatever. Wasn’t like Chess could judge how people handled things, especially not while three hundred milligrams of narcotic slid its slow, warm way through her bloodstream and settled false calm over her nerves. Maybe Lauren’s response was normal. Chess’s certainly wasn’t.

They lit their candles in unison, two bright sparks of light on the dark street.
“Algha canador metruan,”
Chess whispered, and heard the words echoed by Lauren.

She hung back and let Lauren pick the lock on the door. If trouble started she was welcome to be first in line for it.

But no trouble came, and when they slid into the cave Chess understood why.

It was empty.

Maguinness’s energy still waited there, foul and thick around them. The ceiling ropes still hung with their rows of bizarre decoration; the little bed slats still hugged the walls.

But not a single body slept in them. Not a single living being slept anywhere in the cave, at least not that she could see, and when she opened up to the Hand’s magic she found it hadn’t touched anything, hadn’t found a living person to enchant.

He’d known they were coming. Had to have known, unless he simply liked to be out and about at all hours of the night. Which wouldn’t have surprised her, but the idea that he’d taken his entire family with him did.

She knew that wasn’t it anyway. The air of neglect already hung over the place, as if Maguinness had taken something vital from the room itself when he left.

But had he left because she’d been there earlier and he knew she’d be back, or was it because … well, because of something else? Because of war with the Lamaru, or whatever?

“Shit.” Lauren’s shoulders sagged.

Chess tried to hide her relief. Maybe even did a decent job of it. “Come on. We still might find something.”

They split, Chess moving off to the right and Lauren the left. Being in the room, deserted though it was, felt lousy; the power she’d felt earlier had dissipated but it hadn’t disappeared. And every step she took showed her another little bed, another bone or scrap of garbage, another reminder of what had lived here. And worse, that the family was now out on the streets. Who knew what they were doing?

Tied beneath each slat bed was a little charm, a toad bone wrapped in black thread with a piece of mirror dangling from it. Chess reached for one; her skin started crawling before she even touched it.