Dead Things (18 page)

I bolt for the exit. The room shudders and I trip over one of the rings fastened to the floor. Barrel ass over teakettle into one of the candelabra. One sleeve has snagged in a decorative loop of metal. I try to pull myself up, shake the damn thing loose. The sleeve finally tears free. I struggle to stand and hear a footstep inches from me.

“Hello,” Boudreau says.

Chapter 16

All things considered, he looks pretty good for someone who had his soul turned into shredded wheat. The ghosts swarming his body have receded, become part of him until they’re barely visible. I can see them seething just below the surface. Embedded in his skin, his clothes. He’s wearing the same suit I killed him in. Double-breasted, navy blue. Torn, burnt from the exploding propane tanks. Great purple bruises on his face where I took a crowbar to it. He’s more solid than he should be. More opaque than transparent.

I search for something to say. Settle on, “Hey, Jean,” because what the hell else am I supposed to say?

“Eric Carter. Now this is a surprise.”

“Same for me, lemme tell ya.”

“Come back to finish the job, did you?”

“I—”

“Shut up!” His screaming echoes loud in the chamber. It shouldn’t do that. I should be able to hear him in my head, but he shouldn’t be making actual sound. To do that he’d—

“Shit.”

“Damn fucking right you’re in the shit.” He swings a foot and connects right under my solar plexus. I double over, try not to vomit.

Boudreau didn’t appear with the veil between us. We’re not on different sides of the fence, anymore. This is almost as bad as me being over there. On top of that he’s fucking solid. Solid enough to hurt at least. My brain tells me this isn’t possible. But his boot in my chest tells me something else entirely. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. The rulebook’s been tossed out on this one.

“I’m not the one you want,” I say, teeth gritted, my eyes tearing.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, leaning in to give me a good long look. “You’re maybe not at the top of my list but believe me, kid, you’re definitely on it.”

This close and I can feel the power radiating off him like heat from a bonfire. Most of that is coming from his collection of ghosts. Absorbing them, feeding off of them. I see a few small ones under his skin thin out, disappear as he consumes them. Others leave tiny shreds outside his form like loose threads.

Panic wells up inside me. Think fast. It’s a stupid idea, but I can’t think of anything else. “You want Griffin,” I say. “Duncan, I mean. He changed his name.”

“You don’t say. Yeah, I want him. But I’ve got you here.”

“You’ve got him, too. He’s in the tunnel. Waiting to see what will happen. You can’t take him out on your own. He’s gotten a lot more powerful since you went.”

“Horseshit.”

“No lie, man. He’s down the tunnel at the fork, waiting. Hoping you’ll take me out for him and then wander down after him alone and get your ass handed to you.” I’m trying to sell this as much as I can without going over the top. Avert the eyes, nervous hand wringing, earnest face. Got the hem of my shirt bunched up in my fists like a freaked out twelve year old. I worry a thread of the stitching out of its track, pick at it to make it longer.

Boudreau thinks for a minute. I can’t tell if he’s going to buy it or not. I’m screwed either way, but this might buy me some more time. “I don’t feel him out there.”

“What, you think he’d be stupid enough to not be shielding himself? Of course you can’t sense him.”

“And he wouldn’t be stupid enough to let you in here on the chance you’d tell me all this, either.”

I can feel the power collecting in the room. He’s drawing in a lot from the ghosts and from the local pool. I’ve never known a ghost who could do that.

“Yeah, which is why he shoved me in here. He figures you for a hotheaded idiot. Thought you’d take one look at me and smear me across the walls. Said something about you never being able to see the long game.”

“Oh, that is so like him,” Boudreau says. “That arrogant motherfucker. He knows fuck all about me.”

“Seems to think he knows a lot.” I go out on a limb. “He’s been working with Henry Ellis.”

That stops Boudreau cold.

“He’s still alive?” he says. “What did he tell him?”

“Don’t know. But I think he said something about a way to get rid of you permanently.”

Boudreau looks at me with the intensity of a lighthouse. “You’re telling the truth,” he says.

Wow. The dead really are stupid.

“All right,” he says, “but I want you in front of me. You so much as sneeze and I’ll rip you to pieces. Understand?”

“You’re the boss.”

I stand up, the pain in my stomach a throbbing ache. It was a good hit. That’s got me worried. Even when a ghost goes poltergeist, pulled to this side and stuck here, they can’t do much more than shake some furniture. He’s no ordinary ghost, that’s for sure. But how much of a ghost is he?

I stop at the door. Tap the runes. “These going to blow if I open the door?”

“Try it and see,” he says, a wicked grin on his face. A grin like that tells me that when he does try to kill me I won’t see it coming. I pull the door open and step through. It’s pitch black. I’m still doing my worried kid routine. Pulling on that thread and winding it around my finger.

“He’s not far,” I say. The corridor is dusty and there’s trash on the floor. Bottles and cans. Somebody knew about it well enough over the years to come down and throw back a few. We’re probably ten, fifteen feet from the brick wall blocking the rest of the tunnel. I’ve got the thread loosely wrapped around my finger, now for the annoying bit.

I trip. It’s almost a pratfall. Bring my hand down onto the edge of a broken bottle. It slices the skin of my palm deep enough to start bleeding.

“What is this?” Boudreau says. “You said you could help me against Griffin. And you’re just some whiny fuck who can’t walk straight. I don’t know why—Oh, you sonofabitch. You’re bait, aren’t you?”

I tighten my hand into a fist, soaking the thread round my finger and focus my will into a spell of binding. Not too powerful. Doesn’t need to be.

“Not quite,” I say. I yank on the string, unraveling it from my finger as I reach out to Boudreau’s swarm of ghosts. I feel the magic grab hold of one of the ghosts spinning around and through Boudreau like a fish on a hook. Like the thread being pulled from my finger, the ghost is being pulled away from Boudreau. It happens so fast all he can do is squawk, and grab ineffectually against the unraveling ghost.

This ghost is attached to another and another and another. They’re all linked, tied together. And they’re all being spun off him.

It’s almost comical. Like unwrapping a cartoon mummy.

I focus on a banishing spell, pull power in while he’s distracted. It’s simple and brutal and only works on less powerful ghosts. It tears open a hole to the other side and shoves the hooked ghost through. And whatever happens to be attached to it.

Boudreau unravels before my eyes, becoming thinner, weaker, clawing at the ground with hazy hands. A tremendous wind blows out from the hole, a hurricane gale that’s pulling in every ghost in the tunnel.

“You fucker,” Boudreau says, his voice barely a whisper over the howling wind. “You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. Kicked your ass, didn’t I? Twice now, I’m thinking.” I’d stomp on those grasping fingers dragging across the concrete if I could.

“Yeah? Let’s see how you deal with this.” He slaps his hand hard onto the ground, a flash of light appearing underneath it. And with that final act he’s sucked away, an emaciated, wasted shell. Leaving behind this curious little flame on the ground.

It looks a little like a burning egg. So much so that I’m not surprised when it starts to wobble like it’s about to break open. I’m more surprised that it’s here in the first place. Boudreau really did throw out the rulebook. Ghosts don’t cast spells, either.

The egg pulses, and with each pulse it grows a little. Vaguely egg shaped, licks of flame coming off of it. Cracks form on the side as if a baby bird were hatching from it. I’ve seen one of these. It took me a second but I know it now. Stomping out the fire won’t do any good. It’s already too late.

I watched one of these hatch in my parent’s living room fifteen years ago.

I head down the tunnel, slam the door behind me, rush up the steps. I get halfway up the stairs, take a moment to weave together a shield across the steps. It won’t last long and it won’t stop much. But maybe it will buy me enough time to get to the car and the fuck out of here. Screw the cameras seeing me. I’m heading out the front door.

I back the rest of the way up the stairs. Make sure it isn’t right behind me. I clear the trapdoor feeling like maybe I’ll get out of this mess.

And then I hear, “We should have bricked over the entrance while you were in there.”

“This day just won’t fucking quit, will it?” I glance over my shoulder. Griffin, half a dozen of his guys. Nasty looking machine guns pointed at my back. “Hey, you got new guys. You trade ’em in? The old ones were looking a little rough around the edges.”

I keep walking backward, a little more slowly. I don’t want them to shoot me, but I don’t want to be near that trapdoor, either.

“Who else is down there?” Griffin asks. His face is pretty banged up and one of his fingers is in a splint.

“Just me.”

“Bullshit. Heard you talking to someone down there.”

A loud groan of wrenching metal below us shows me up as the liar I am. “Okay, maybe not just me.” Sounds like Boudreau’s parting gift got through the tunnel door.

Griffin points to one of his men. “Get him out of the way and cover him. The rest of you cover the trapdoor. Last chance. Tell us who your friend is or my men unload as soon as he pops his head out of that hole.”

“Would you believe me if I told you it was a really nasty fire elemental?”

Griffin nods at the man covering me, who gives me a glancing blow across the forehead with the butt of his gun. More surprise than pain, it still knocks me on my ass.

A deep shudder rolls through the floor, then another. I can feel the concrete beneath my hands grow warm. Panic threatens to consume me, but I force it down. I inch back a little. The noise gets louder. Worry creases the men’s faces. I get ready to move.

A blast of heat and smoke pours out of the trapdoor and a glow like hell’s own furnace. My guard turns away to see what’s going on and I make my move.

I bowl into him, fouling his aim. He stitches a line of gunfire into the ceiling. This is a stupid move, rushing headlong into a mob of armed men. But the thing behind me is worse.

A blast of furnace heat bursts from the trap door followed by a deafening roar like sequoia falling in a forest fire. A wave of flame shoots out, spreading into a form of two thick forelegs, a long sinuous body and a head that’s impossibly huge. It looks like a giant, pissed off weasel made of fire.

More importantly everyone’s shooting at it and not me. Which is a plus any way you look at it.

Chapter 17

Elementals are a pain in the ass. Each one is brought into the world with a single purpose, a simple command. Drown this guy, bury that one, fly me to the next county over. Burn a house down with the people still inside.

They’re not smart, but what they lack in brains they more than make up for in tenacity. They’ll keep going until they accomplish their task, get destroyed, or are ordered to stop by their summoner. Boudreau’s not around to stop it and I don’t know how to destroy it. That leaves option three, me dying, which I’m really not all that keen on.

I duck between a row of crates, zag toward a door at the far side of the warehouse. I hear the chatter of automatic weapons fire behind me. Screaming. A monstrous roar like a bonfire made out of Molotovs.

I make a run for another set of crates. Bullets follow me, punching holes through wood, ricocheting off metal. I hazard a glance at the fight. It’s one hell of a fray. Two of Griffin’s men are charred husks on the floor. Everyone else has scattered in a loose circle around the elemental, unloading bullets into it that vaporize before they reach it.

The elemental’s tail arches and flows, leaving scorch marks on the cracking cement floor. It paws the ground like a bull, whips its head out at one of the gunmen who doesn’t get out of the way in time. It snatches him in flaming jaws. His screams turn into a hiss as he bursts into flame and his bones explode.

The elemental rears up to take a leap, letting loose a roar that shakes the walls, the cement beneath its feet cracked and bubbling. And then Griffin waves a hand and with a blast of magic throws a shipping container at it. The heavy metal box kicks up sparks as it grinds across the cement like a race car, slams into the elemental, keeps going until it crashes into the wall.

Stunned silence. No sound but the ringing in my ears and the heavy crackle of licking flames. That was easier than I expected. Which means I have a problem.

I duck behind another shipping container as Griffin and the last few of his cadre open up on me. Bullets ping against the metal. I hear the whooshing sound of fire extinguishers. I’ve made one hell of a tactical error. They’re going to flank me. I can’t cover both sides of the container.

The door on the far side cracks open, Vivian pops her head in, sees me. Waves at me to run. I take a deep breath, wish I did more cardio on a regular basis.

The warehouse fills with a wrenching, bubbling sound. Metal tearing, melting, turning into slag. The sound of more gunfire. I risk a quick look around the edge of the container. Expect bullets for my trouble. But the shooters are a little preoccupied.

The shipping container that just flattened the elemental is glowing white hot. The metal is bubbling and dripping into pools of molten steel. Flame claws spread around the edge. They don’t push it out of the way so much as melt it. What’s left of the container shreds, flinging superheated chunks of shrapnel that gouge pits in the cement floor. I duck back in time to avoid being sliced and cauterized.