He knew other hungry ghosts? Great. Leaving Jorgen to guard him, I turned toward the door.
* * *
The man had left the door open when he’d come outside. I hoped Jorgen wouldn’t eat him while I wasn’t looking—I wasn’t sure I could handle that on my conscience. I swung the door open and looked inside before entering. It was dark. Disconcertingly so.
This was for my mom. I’d find out what had happened to Adriana, and then Luz would owe me, no matter what. The small voice that kept telling me what a bad idea this was in the back of my head—I told that voice to shut the hell up.
I reached in and fished past the doorjamb for the light switch. As my hand passed into the darkness, I felt an odd static in the air. About as far as I could reach my hand into the room, I felt the chipped plastic switch against the wall and flipped it. It wasn’t wired to the light overhead, but to a light at the top of the stairs that rose from this bottom entryway. I stepped fully in, and felt enveloped by the charge—as if it were crawling up and down my skin, inside my clothing, like electric pins and needles.
It smelled in here too. Worse than Jorgen’s breath. Like rotting meat. Not good. I was prepared to find one dead body, but the smell promised more.
Jorgen had followed me from the alley to look inside. He leaned forward through the door, but it seemed to be blocked to him. Maybe by whatever I was feeling right now.
“Can you come in?” Screw the man in the alley. I’d feel better with Jorgen at my back.
The Hound shook his head. Whatever felt weird about the air in here was actually barring him. “Shit.”
The room I was in was just a communal room, a landing for the rooms that branched off it. Two doors to either side, and then the stairs leading up. I didn’t know where to go next; I was going to just try the door on my right when I heard a groan.
Up the stairs. Of course.
I’d left the door open behind me, in the hope that Jorgen would follow me or stay in my line of sight. I took the first stair, listened to it creak, and then took the next three stairs more slowly before looking back at Jorgen’s disappearing form.
Whatever I’d thought I’d be doing tonight, I didn’t think I’d actually be doing it alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I reached the top of the stairs as quietly as I could. As I walked up, I could see there was another landing, and again, more doors.
Another groan. Louder. Longer. But I couldn’t locate it—there was a door in front of me, and a door to my left. I opened the one in front of me first.
This place reeked. As a nurse, I’d smelled ten different kinds of death before, seen maggots feasting on someone’s gangrenous leg, and this smelled worse. It was dark inside too, of course. It felt humid, probably from the rain, but my skin imagined it as the dampness of spoiled things. With extreme reluctance I fumbled inside for a light switch. My hand found something smooth and round instead. I patted up and down, more strange things, and started panicking. I inhaled, exhaled, imagined where the hell the light switch would be if this fucking place were built to code, and went in for it, finding the tiny plastic nub of a switch between two smoother surroundings.
This time, the light illuminated the whole room. Which let me see that the things I’d been touching on the wall … were bones.
“Oh, God.” The entire wall I was walking out of was faced in bones. Long femurs and short tarsals, and broken-up pieces of skull wedged between. The entire wall—and half the ceiling. And part of the floor.
I took a few steps in, careful not to touch anything else. Not all of the bones had been bleached, which was the reason for the smell. Nuggets of flesh, strings of tendon, all remained attached.
“¿Hola?” said a very weak voice, hoarse.
I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from at first. The jagged outlines of the bones on the walls prevented me from seeing what was there, like an optical illusion—a cage made of bones, set on the room’s far side.
“¿Que está ahí?”
Whoever was talking sounded frail. I walked nearer, reminding myself that cages were a two-way street. They could be cruelly used on good dogs—or used on bad dogs, to keep good dogs safe.
The bones were wired up with curling rebar, ornate, disgustingly beautiful, Giger-esque. I stopped a body length away from the cage to peer inside.
“Por favor, ayúdame.” It was a woman, dressed in a thin nightgown. I thought she was a child at first, but then I realized she’d been starved. Her hair was in front of her face, her arms were stick-thin, and—“Por favor, por favor.”
“Please?” I knew por favor. She started speaking, more quickly, and I held up my hands. “I don’t know what else you’re saying. Are you okay? Se habla ingles? Dolor?”
“Mucho dolor.” Much pain, she agreed. She reached for the bars of her cage, and I knew what I thought I saw was true. The outlines of the bones under her skin had been tattooed on her arms. There was a tattoo on the back of her ring finger on her right hand, one that I knew I’d seen before, but her hands were so thin, so thin.
“How can I help you out of here?” I had never wished so hard to know another language in my life.
She turned toward me, and the hair slid away from her face. The outline of her skull had been tattooed on her, the outlines of teeth pulled up on either side of her mouth, forcing her face into a cruel smile, just like Santa Muerte in the altar outside.
“We have to get you out,” I said more loudly. I didn’t know how, but—I touched the cage carefully. The bones weren’t solid, but the rebar beneath them was. I searched for any cracks.
“Come on—” I found a loose bone, and pulled, and it came off with a crack, but the rebar below didn’t budge. The bars were welded too close together for me to manage to pull her through. I groped over bones not long removed from their owners, searching for a door—Maldonado had gotten her in there somehow, and that’s how I’d get her out again—then I found it. A knot of rebar, double-wrapped, in between pierced vertebrae.
It wasn’t a lock, and there wasn’t a key. Whoever had twisted this cage shut on Adriana never meant to open it again.
I put my hands on either side of the knot’s tail and prayed that I somehow could Hulk out and get Adriana free. “Come on, come on—”
“Edith?” came a weak voice from outside the room. Almost no one called me Edith anymore. I stood up straighter and looked around. The woman in the cage, nearly skin and bones, pulled herself halfway up.
“I’m so sorry—hang on—I’ll be right back.” I started backing out of the room. The woman in the cage reached a bony arm through its bars out at me.
She didn’t cry. She might have been too dehydrated to cry.
* * *
I made it back to the landing without fishing around inside bones to find the light switch again. I went to the second door and opened it up.
“Edith—I smell you.”
“Dren?” Jorgen’s owner, my erstwhile Husker, the vampire who’d tormented me, whom I’d cost a hand. “Dren?” I asked again, my voice rising.
“Don’t turn on the light. Just come here.”
I stood in the doorway. “Dren, what’s going on? Why are you here?”
“It took Jorgen long enough to find you. Come here.”
Was this where Jorgen had wanted me to come all along? Nice. And ironic. No wonder he’d been so pleased.
“Come here,” Dren demanded again.
“No.” He sounded weak, but that didn’t mean that it was safe to wander in blindly and say hi. “How about you come here? I need your help to free this girl.”
“I’m not in a position to free anyone right now. Get in here.” There was a long pause, and then a word I never thought I’d hear. “Please.”
That was weird—and frightening. “Dren, tell me what’s happening. Now.”
“Edie—I’m weak. They’ve…” His voice sunk low. “If you turn on the light, we might be seen. We don’t have much time before he comes back. Hurry.”
“Hurry and do what?”
“Help me, goddammit! Please!”
A piece of vampire lore returned to me. Honor and whatnot, when sworn. “Swear not to hurt me.”
There was a dry laugh. “I swear it. I couldn’t hurt a fly. Come closer, Edie. I’ll need to lean on you.”
There was movement at the back of the room, him, fabric, the bang of something metal. I took a step inside, and another, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness ahead of me. He was laying on a metal table, draped in a sheet not unlike a gown, one hand folded in across his lap, the other hand missing.
“Come on already.” I waved him to come forward. The charge around me, what I’d felt when I first came into this cursed place, was increasing now. The pins and needles were beginning to feel more like teeth.
“I can’t. I need your help.” He reached out to me, with his arm that ended in a stump.
“And swear to help my mom,” I added.
“I swear, but only if you hurry the fuck up,” he hissed.
I’d wanted to save my mom, right? And I’d found Adriana. Only I couldn’t get her out. I was torn between the two rooms, like a kid frozen between horrors at a haunted house. Neither of the rooms was a good option, and everything felt like it was getting worse, fast—it was act, or run, and don’t stop running, don’t think of looking back.
I ran toward him instead, and drew myself up short at his bedside. He was lashed down, restrained across his chest, abdomen, thighs, and feet. I ratcheted the ties off him, unlacing their ends, freeing him. He gasped as the last one came loose, and pushed himself up.
He lurched up, swung his arm around my neck, and shoved himself off the table. He hobbled, as if one of his legs didn’t work. Because it didn’t. I looked down at his other flaccid arm.
“The bones. They take them out each night. Alternating. And then I heal, and then they take them out again.” His voice was dancing on the edge of mania.
I grit my teeth to not puke, and took a step forward. Stumbling, he came with me. Okay, okay, okay. Do this. Don’t run.
“Jorgen’s outside.”
“Good. Let’s go.” Dren said, his face tucked in against my neck.
* * *
I would have rather saved the old grandmother again than Dren. This place was so much worse than the storm drain where I’d found her. It’d only been trash there, things forgotten. This place was full of bad intent. Someone had done this to Dren—was doing that to Adriana.
“Is there any way—” I started to ask, even though I had no idea how I’d manage to carry them both out. And Dren couldn’t even use both his arms.
“No. She’s as good as dead. Just hurry—go—” he pleaded.
I was saving the vampire instead of the girl. I heard her whimpering as we crossed the upper landing. She must know we were leaving her behind. She deserved saving more than Dren, but he was the only one I could get out. It felt so wrong, but I couldn’t think of how I could undo her cage’s knot.
How much more moral ambiguity could I take? I’d work on sorting it out tomorrow.
“I’ll come back,” I whispered to the girl, praying that she could hear me, that she’d understand—that no one had ever lied and told her that before.
I just needed to get Dren over to Jorgen. Who knew where the hell they would go together, but after that, he would owe me. This had to be worth some blood.
And then maybe I could come back for her. I didn’t know what I could do against welded rebar and magic, but there had to be something, something, something—we reached the top of the stairs, and the door opened below.
Fuck.
Dren started panting into my neck. “Don’t let him hurt me, Edie. Don’t let him hurt me again—” His voice was rising like a boy’s.
“Shhhhh.” There was nowhere for us to hide, only one way out. I thought about throwing Dren down the stairs—it wasn’t like he could die, right?—and somehow tumbling after him, getting the door open again, somehow hauling Jorgen inside to help us.
That was a lot of somehows.
The bottom floor’s new occupant arrived at the bottom of the stairs, putting his foot on the first creaky step. He stepped into the half-light the downstairs switch provided. And I knew him.
“Ti?” My zombie ex-boyfriend. I almost dropped Dren in surprise.
“Ti—this is awesome timing—can you help?” I shouldered Dren up higher as he hung limp against me, like a rag doll. “Dren’s been hurt, and there’s this girl upstairs—” I began, and I realized my great luck. “You’re strong enough to open her cage, awesome!”
“Edie,” Dren warned, with true fear in his voice.
Ti was silent as he came up the second and third stairs.
“Ti?” He had to have seen me. Right? “Come on. Hurry up and help.”
Dren started quivering, trying to control his disobedient limbs and lurch away. “See if you can get us past him—hurry!”
“What—” I looked down at Dren, who was trying to let go of me and brace himself against the wall, and then back to the still-ascending Ti.
Who was holding a long butcher knife.
“No. No no no. This is not happening,” I bartered aloud. I backed us up an awkward step as Ti rose. “Ti—you can’t do this. This isn’t you.”
The Ti I knew put honor above almost everything else in life. Wanted to help people, not hurt them, not unless they deserved it. Wanted to get to go to heaven when he died, once he’d earned back the lost half of his soul. “Ti, please—”
I could see his expressionless face. There was nothing of the man I’d once loved there, nothing of anyone, nothing at all.
“Ti—stop,” I ordered, hoping it would trigger something in him. “Stop this right now. I’m Edie. You remember me. I know you do.”
The electric currents of this place were roiling now; it felt like my hair was on end. I pushed Dren sideways, into the wall, and blocked him from Ti with my body. I was going to be killed by my zombie ex-boyfriend, and my bones put into the room with that poor woman. Silver didn’t work on zombies. I pulled out my badge and prayed to someone, anyone, that it might still protect me the way it used to when I was on Y4.
It struck up like a lit match, and Ti paused one stair down from us.
“Dren—go. Somehow. Just go.”
Dren fought against my back, and I moved forward. He fell down a few steps, tumbling past Ti, and then started crawling forward, dragging himself down the stairs with his one good arm.
Ti made to follow him. I raced down the stairs until I was below him, badge still out. The electric jolts were sharper, running up and down my body in sharp snaps, like the charges from a violet wand. My badge sputtered like a dying sparkler, and Ti took a step down, implacable, following Dren. I put myself in his way.
“Ti, say something,” I pleaded, but he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. I was close enough now to see that his eyes were glazed. He was not himself here. He took another step forward, and I took another step back.
“Please, Ti. No.” The butcher knife was still at his side. I was in striking range now. I had to believe that Ti wouldn’t kill me—I put my dying badge against Ti’s chest, breathing heavy, the electricity in the room buzzing in my ears. We danced together down another stair.
“Ti—I know you remember me.” His eyes tracked me. Was that good, or bad? I hoped that whatever in him was human was listening. “You broke up with me once. You do not get to kill me again.” He stopped advancing. The knife was still low. I could hear Dren behind me, pulling himself against the linoleum floor.
“I’m out!” Dren called from below, just as the light from my badge disappeared.
I took three steps back. Ti didn’t follow me. His body might belong to someone else now, but his eyes were still his, watching me. I didn’t want to leave him here. “Ti—”
“Edie—hurry!” Dren called from the alley.
I dropped my badge, turned my back, and ran for the door.
CHAPTER T
WENTY-NINE
Outside, Dren was scrabbling along on the wet ground, and Jorgen was standing guard over him. What had happened to Ti?
“Okay, okay—” If I stopped telling myself what to do I would panic. I reached down and pulled Dren up. He hissed at me, fangs out. “Don’t you dare—”
“Just get me out of here.”
The man who was still lying back there with his broken leg started trying to crawl backward at the sight of Dren.
Dren’s shirt slipped through my fingers as I tried to haul him up. I’d only imagined springing him—it hadn’t occurred to me that after that, we’d somehow have to run and that he wouldn’t be able to walk. I hadn’t thought about bringing a wheelchair along.
Jorgen knelt awkwardly, and I tried to hoist Dren up onto his back, but Dren kept sliding off. There was surprised shouting from down the alley. Perhaps the disappearance of Jorgen’s first victim had been discovered. I couldn’t understand their words, but I could hear their angry tone.
“Dren, we’re going to have company soon. Can you send them away?” We were still trying to scrape our way down the alley, the three of us, unsuccessfully. But I’d been with Dren before when he’d made everyone ignore him, entire train cars full of normal people.
“Can’t. Too weak. Too close to the bruja’s power.” He hauled himself up Jorgen’s side desperately and planted his fangs into the Hound’s neck. Jorgen snarled and twisted, dislodging him.
“Horrible beast!” Dren yelled, back on the ground.
“This is not the time to be feeding, Dren—”
“I need blood!” Dren yelled.
The man we’d threatened earlier had crawled backward to hide behind the dog cages, and then he started yelling for help.
“Shit!” I hissed. “Come on.” Jorgen looked behind us and took a flying leap back toward the dog cages. “No!” I shouted at him. The dogs squealed. Jorgen stopped, but he was standing over the man who’d given us away. The man started praying at the top of his lungs. Santa Muerte this, Santa Muerte that.
“You’d be better off praying to me!” I hauled Dren away, dragging him down the alleyway like a dead body. Three Crosses men raced out of the building like angry ants, weapons drawn. At a command from someone among their ranks, they held fire and moved aside. I’d never seen so many guns before. My stomach turned to ice.
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