by Stacia Kane
And Lex? She had no idea what to do about him. She knew what she should do, which would be to end it. But what difference would that make now? Wasn’t like Terrible would forgive her as soon as she did.
And she liked Lex. Maybe they weren’t compatible in every way, and maybe they both knew there was no real future for them—Hell, no maybe about it; they both knew. But he made her laugh and he turned her on, and he was decent company who didn’t ask questions or try to have deep, meaningful conversations with her. In a lot of ways he was the perfect pseudo-boyfriend.
But if she didn’t give him up, there would be no chance of righting things with Terrible, not ever.
So did she stick with the acceptable sure thing, or give it up for the possibility—just the outside chance—of something … else?
She sighed. No point in thinking about possibilities, really. She’d ruined everything. She’d known what the consequences might be and had done it anyway. Self-destruction was one thing, but she was turning into a one-woman wrecking ball.
She grabbed a couple more pills, washed them down, and surveyed her ragtag troops. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The house would have been easy to find even without the line of men patiently curling from the front door around to the side. Easy to find, because Chess felt its call, faint like a soft erotic whisper against her skin, growing stronger and blacker with every step.
A house like any other, one of many lining the broken streets. Blistered, peeled paint that might once have been white or gray still clung in splotches like a festering rash to the walls; a few rickety bars remained of what had once been a porch railing. It should have looked dead, another empty corpse to be disposed of.
Chess knew better, though, and for that reason she saw the house through its greenish-black magic haze like a predator, watching and waiting, its hooded eyes half-closed in feigned somnolence.
No lights came from any windows; several doors down the charred remnants of a similar house still smoked. Burned down, she guessed, when its inhabitants left their heater running or their candles lit in their haste to sample Vanita and Kemp’s treacherous wares. Good thing they’d set up this far on the edges. Had they used a building in the middle of Downside, half the population would have been sucked into their trap.
She turned and checked their men. She and Oliver had worked together to invent an anti-arousal sigil that seemed to be working—certainly none of them were joining the line, although a few of them looked a little dazed—but she had no idea how long the effect would last. Once they got inside …
She shook her head. Time for that later. First they had to get those men out of there. They were too much of a distraction, too much of a threat, to leave on the scene.
“Okay.” She set her bag down and folded her arms. At least for the moment she could forget everything else and focus on this, on her work. “I want to cast a circle around the entire building, so I don’t have to do it individually when I’m inside. Oliver, do you think the sigil will break the spell they’re under?”
“I’m not sure. I suppose we could try.”
“Okay. Do that, and let’s see. I’d rather not draw too much attention. They probably already know we’re here, but still.”
Oliver took the piece of black chalk she offered him, wandered over to the line of men. Chess held her breath.
The man Oliver picked ignored him until the sigil on his arm was complete. Oliver glanced back at her as if to ask what she thought, but before she opened her mouth the man shook his head, glanced around him as though he had no idea what he was doing, and stepped out of the line.
Excellent. “Okay. Oliver, get them all marked. I’m going to start the cast, okay?”
“How bout I go along, me?” Lex had his knife out and ready; beneath his shirt she saw the bulge of a gun.
Terrible snorted, turned away. Chess ignored him.
“Yeah, okay. But no talking. I need to focus.”
She set up her stang facing east on the pavement, fixing the iron base and placing the candles on either side.
Something was wrong here. She didn’t know what, but something was definitely not right, and it was more than the fear creeping up her spine or the misery over what had happened with Terrible—shit, did she really think he was going to just forgive her, after what she’d done to him?—or simple sadness over the deaths of so many people.
No. Something was wrong, and she didn’t know what it was. But she had a distinct feeling she was about to find out.
The bag of salt she’d brought, big and heavy as it was, still wouldn’t be big enough to cast as thick a line as she would like all the way around the building, and the intermittent breeze wouldn’t help. She’d have to drop it thin and hope she could power it enough to hold.
Another psychopomp would have been nice, too. Oh well. Nothing could ever be easy—
The shouts behind her hit her ears at the same time her other senses rang angry alarms through her entire body. Too easy. It was too easy, wasn’t it, to assume that one sigil was enough? To assume that whatever enchantment hung in the air around this place would be dispelled with one stupid sigil?
Yeah, it totally was. Her upper body twisted, and she saw the fight begin.
Chapter Twenty-nine
To use a wild psychopomp is a serious crime; to cause the death of a psychopomp is a grave one, and puts both the life and soul of the murderer in jeopardy.
—Psychopomps: The Key to Church Ritual and Mystery,
by Elder Brisson
Men. The men standing in line, going from docile lust zombies to angry mob in the space of a second. Men in robes like the one worn by Kemp at the Crematorium poured from the doorway of the building. Not so many, maybe five or six in all, but their power hit her like a fist in the stomach. They were all hosting, all of them, given superior strength by the spirits sharing their bodies. And fuck, when they died, those spirits would rise—
She couldn’t help. Couldn’t do anything but cast the circle as fast as she could in order to get to work. Without the circle, the psychopomp could escape, could run loose in the city and take whatever souls it wanted. Could do murder—murder for which she’d be liable when they caught the psychopomp and discovered it was hers.
“Septikosh, septikosh,” she murmured, wanting to stay quiet and keep herself out of their focus as long as possible. Beside her Lex pulled out his gun, caught her eye; she nodded and kept moving, letting the salt trickle from her fingers.
They rounded the corner, Chess keeping her mind focused as much as she could on her circle, on the words of power spilling from her tight throat. Energy stood her hair on end. The power in this place, oh shit …
Every step she took felt like a step toward her own death. Her vision darkened around the edges; it wasn’t just the strength of the magic here, it was the sheer filthy malevolence of it. Protections were all over the damn place, no surprise there—that was what set the men out front off, wasn’t it, they probably had an alarm set for unfamiliar magic—and she wasn’t sure how easily they’d break, if they would break at all.
She’d have to deal with the protections or wards when they came up. If she made it that far. She still didn’t know who was inside watching, where Kemp and Vanita were.
Around the next corner, to the back of the building. No lights here, and the moon hid somewhere in the broken concrete skyline. Shadows threatened and beckoned along the patchy bricks on the ground, turning the mundane shapes into looming hulks waiting to leap out at her.
Her hair brushed against her face, and she paused just long enough to yank a ponytail holder out of her pocket and use it. The movement shifted her gaze to the right … to the high-wheeled Dumpster against the wall … to the arm hanging out of it.
She’d seen a Dumpster like this by the Crematorium, hadn’t she? Of course. Those missing bodies had to go somewhere, right? And she’d wondered herself why the killers hadn’t taken the prostitutes there. They were too busy dumping t
he men, it appeared. Their Dumpster was full.
With that macabre realization came the faint stench of decay, one with which she’d become way too familiar a few months before. She tried to ignore it and kept going, her steps slow and steady, her voice still calm. Behind her the line coalesced. Her luck and her salt were both holding out for the moment.
Lex moved constantly at her side, scanning the area, staying alert. It reassured her. She let herself focus on the magic and forget the rest.
It was coming, growing inside her and in the air around them. Sweat broke out on her skin. Her heart pounded, her body itched like she’d gone too long between doses. If there’d been any food in her stomach, she probably would have brought it back up; every step was like walking through deep slime sucking at her legs, trying to pull her down.
Faintly over the beat of her heart and her own voice came shouts, the men fighting in front of the building. Another problem to ignore, at least until she finally left the alley and walked back into the meager light.
Bodies in front of her, surging and tumbling, anger and violence heavy in the air. It forced its choking way into her, sent adrenaline pounding through her veins. Not good. Magic required calm, required focus, and showing any sort of emotion around ghosts was a bad idea. Especially fear.
And ghosts there were. Either some of the house guards were dead, or they’d summoned more ghosts to fight with them, or both. Translucent forms flitted in and out of the crowd, appearing and disappearing.
Not for the first time she was thankful Oliver was there. Without him … Without him everyone might have died. Would have died, because of her and her lack of foresight. She’d given him some graveyard dirt and asafetida, but it hadn’t occurred to her to hand it out to the others. That was what too much emotion could do. Kill people.
Lex tensed. The gun cocked. Chess held out her hand, caught his eye, and shook her head. Not until they were seen.
Which would be in about ten seconds. No getting out of it; to finish the cast she needed to walk awfully close to the fight.
Blue light sparked from her fingers as she etched a quick sigil into the air, an attempt at rendering Lex and herself unobtrusive. Whether it worked she couldn’t tell, not with so much energy pounding through her already.
They made it within a few feet before they were spotted. One of the guards spun around, his mouth opening, hands already rising. In one of them a dagger caught the edge of the moon.
Her left hand was still full of salt. With her right she grabbed some graveyard dirt.
The gun went off. The sound barely hit her ears when a hole appeared in the guard’s forehead, his features below it fixed in surprise.
The entity he hosted slipped from his falling body, rage blasting from it like cold from a high-octane freezer. Chess forced herself to stand still, to wait, until it got close enough for her to hit it with the dirt.
The respite only lasted a second. If their mere presence hadn’t been enough to attract attention, the gunshot certainly was. The fighters turned en masse and came at them, and only the knowledge that if she gave up now, she’d only have to come back later kept her from running away.
Run she did, though, ducking in and out among the bodies, her mouth forming words of power that meant little more than nonsense syllables in her weary, semi-panicked state of mind. Her salt line thickened and thinned; she moved too erratically to keep it even.
Through the haze she saw Terrible, had time to register the blood pouring down the side of his face before he disappeared from her sight again. Bodies jostled her, elbows catching her ribs and arms, feet almost knocking her over. She could only hope she wasn’t leaving huge gaps in the salt line, that it would seal into the ground properly.
Somehow she thought it wouldn’t, but there was nothing she could do about it.
She drew her own knife from her pocket, ducked under the last few fists. Almost time to close the circle.
Oliver caught her eye, saw the weapon in her hand. She made a slicing motion with it and pointed to herself, hoping he’d know what she meant.
He did. He nodded, cut around the fighters to the edge. The crowd had definitely thinned. Slow-moving ghosts hung around the edges, a few of them outside her salt line, all of them held by the dirt and Oliver’s words of power. Should she send her psychopomp after them before she went inside? Or would that be a waste of time?
Unless … Her gaze traveled up, to the familiar sight of birds circling the building, riding the air currents above the fighting men. Psychopomps. Wild ones, whose use was not recommended in ritual; she’d never heard of anyone actually doing it, save with an owl like the one Kemp and Vanita used, and even then she knew they’d trained it, worked with it extensively. They must have.
These were common birds: sparrows, pigeons, crows. She thought she glimpsed a hawk, but it disappeared before she could be certain.
Oliver shouted something she couldn’t make out. He was struggling, weariness apparent in his hunched shoulders and slowed movements. If he ran out of energy, if he were injured or killed, the ghosts would be unstoppable.
Okay, then.
The last of the salt fell through her fingers, completing the circle. Magic swirled around her, the wind died. Time to seal it.
Her knife’s handle was warm, a little slick from sweat. She raised her left hand palm up over the salt line. With her right she placed the point of the blade on her left pinkie, beside the healing wound from the graveyard.
“With salt I make the circle whole. With blood I make the circle whole. With my power I seal the circle that it may hold strong and be not broken.”
On “blood” she sliced herself, a quick, hard movement that opened the pad of her fingertip. Blood welled in the cut, dripped over the edge, and hit the salt.
Her entire body shook. The black magic guarding the house was reacting to her magic; she felt pulled in two directions, battered from both sides like a piece of meat caught in a garbage disposal. A scream forced its way out of her mouth, past her tight lips. Her head was about to explode.
From a million miles away she heard Oliver’s echoing shout. Shit. It was hitting him too, of course. If it immobilized him—He was powerful, yes, but he was not a witch despite his education and natural ability. She could fight this—at least she thought she could—but whether he could, she did not know.
She flung her left hand up, watching her blood leap from it into the air. “I call on the escorts of the dead! Ornithramii mordreus, I command you!”
Power slammed into her like a wall, hard; unseeing, unfeeling and cold as death itself. Her body screamed, every muscle and nerve vibrating with agony as it struggled to absorb the blow. Too much, way too much, she was going to fall apart, dissolve into nothing. Her mind overloaded, the small remaining conscious part of it screaming at her, pounding its fists, trying to get control before she went insane.
Without her knowing why or how, the words burst from her again. “Ornithramii mordreus, I command you! By my blood and by my power I command you!”
Abruptly the power left, swooping out of her with the same rage with which it had entered, leaving her struggling to stand, still battered by the dark welcome Kemp and his ghost had left for her.
Overhead the birds screamed.
She had them. She thought she had them. Deep in the back of her mind she felt them, angry and curious in equal measure, fighting against her control.
It made her sick. They were chaos, they were a hivemind, and she didn’t know how long she would be able to hold them. Couldn’t stop being amazed that she’d been able to catch them in the first place, couldn’t stop hearing the warnings of Elder Bewick about how unpredictable wild birds were in ritual and the dangers of attempting to use them.
Danger was relative. She could use the birds and possibly die, or she could not use them and certainly die. Along with everyone else.
She set her firetray down and heaped herbs into it, wolfsbane and ajenjible, sandalwood, black cohosh and hys
sop and bat nut. Her lighter flared to life, and she touched the flame to the herbs.
Fire leapt from the tray, blasted a few seconds of heat onto her skin. In her hasty bag-packing she’d thrown in some dehydrated earthworms, hard and twisted like scraps of tree bark, and she threw those onto the fire, a small offering to echo the larger one she was about to make.
This time she sliced across her palm, barely noticing the pain through the throbbing of magic in her veins. Her body beat in time to it, her head pounding. Wings fluttered in her eyes, feathers touching her body. Not the birds, but the power of the birds, their essence, fighting her control.
“I offer appeasement to the escorts for their aid,” she said, watching her blood fall onto the fire. Waiting to see if her sacrifice would be accepted.
The birds fell silent.
Chess looked up. They still soared overhead, their wings flashing moonlight, but they made no other sound. In her head their frantic energy calmed. Still wild, still unpredictable, but—for the moment—accepting.
“Escorts of the dead, I command you, take those souls which do not belong. By my blood, by my power, by my sacrifice, remove them from this world and take them back to their place of silence!”
The birds turned. For the first time since she’d passed them, Chess allowed herself to look at the fighting men.
They were barely visible. Black smoke filled the air around her, the physical manifestation of the dark wards. She’d been so caught up with the birds she’d barely paid attention, but when she stopped she still felt it, whispering around her, trying to sap her strength.
Terrible’s head moved above the crowd; he still stood, still fought. She caught a glimpse of Lex’s spikes, of Oliver’s pale, exhausted face, of a few others she recognized.
