Unholy Ghosts (17 page)

“Ai! T’other way, t’other…”
Big Shog was already passing out again, but before his hand fell to his side she saw the way he was pointing. Great. Chess fished a five-dollar bill out of her bag and tucked it into his pocket. “Thanks.”
The door was only a few minutes down the tunnel, tucked at the top of a short flight of stairs, and she walked through it with the air of someone about to start a new life. She’d survived. The moon was full overhead—it must be at least eleven o’clock—but she’d made it out of the library, out of the church, out of the tunnels, and here she was, on a dingy street in an unfamiliar part of town that smelled of smoke and filth. Sometimes things worked out, after all.

Chapter Twenty-three

“All Church employees are expected to comport themselves in a manner befitting their stations at all times. You represent everything that is right and holy in the world. You must never forget it.”

—
The Example Is You
, the guidebook for Church employees

After two Cepts, a hot shower, and one purple Valtruin, it was as though the entire day had never happened. Chess strolled into Trickster’s Bar just before one with her face set in a permasmile and her body feeling as though it existed on another planet where nothing bad ever happened. Not like this world. Not like the stuff she had to tell Terrible about before she could head off to Lex’s place for the night. Lex…Lex and that slice of bare skin she’d seen, Lex and that kiss…Him she
didn’t
trust, not at all. Not that it mattered; trust and sex had nothing to do with each other, at least not for her.
She had to tell Terrible what happened first, though. Because they needed to set up a time and place where she could perform the ritual to set free Slipknot’s soul. Because she was supposed to keep reporting in, and Bump was nowhere to be found. But mostly…mostly because she owed him the knowledge, as fast as she could get it to him. He’d involved himself when he didn’t have to, he’d touched the book for her, and he deserved to know exactly what they were dealing with. And who might be coming after him.
It took a moment for her wildly dilated eyes to adjust to the light, and another minute to find him. The interior of Trickster’s was like a dive bar in a hell dimension, scented with smoke and stale beer and lit with blue lights and red gels so everything white glowed fluorescent red.
Terrible stood in the back, talking to some men whose faces she couldn’t identify but who looked vaguely familiar. From the tattoo parlor, perhaps, or just guys she’d seen around. Downside was a small, small world. Chances were the person you robbed on Tuesday would be dating your neighbor on Thursday.
She floated across the room to him, aware from about halfway that he was watching her.
“Hey, Chess. You right?”
“Right up. Can we talk somewhere?”
He gave her a slow nod. She followed him back into the hall where the bathrooms were. The music was quieter here, by just enough that they didn’t have to shout, but the hall was narrow, forcing her to stand a little closer to him than she’d intended, close enough to smell soap and beer.
“So I found out about him,” she said. “About…the name, on the amulet. What he’s doing here. I mean, I found out what he does, I don’t know what he’s doing here, why they wanted him specifically.” She felt she was babbling suddenly and stopped short. Was he looking at her oddly?
“Aye.”
“He’s a Dreamthief. That’s how he gets people—he sneaks into their heads while they sleep and feeds on the energy of their dreams. He’s like a demon, but not a demon, just a very nasty spirit with a lot of extra power. Like a huge entity made of junk from other ghosts.”
“Thought demons wasn’t real.”
“They’re not, it was just the only thing I could come up with. He’s powerful like they were supposed to be, is what I meant.”
“He that powerful to start? Or causin he feeds up on a lot of sleepers?”
She thought about it for a minute, which was harder than it should have been. “Probably a bit of both. The book didn’t really say exactly how he came into being, or when, but…Sometimes spirits disintegrate, or meld—sometimes one part of them feeds on the rest, absorbs it, and then combines with other bits from other souls. So he was already pretty jacked up. What he gets from humans only adds to it.”
This still didn’t explain why he hadn’t killed her when he had the chance. Some ghosts needed to work hard to be able to kill people or do damage, but he should have been strong enough right from the beginning, especially with the power of Slipknot’s soul keeping him earth-bound.
“Why somebody wanna call a thing like that?”
Oh yeah. He didn’t know what had happened to her at the Church. “Not just somebody. The Lamaru.”
His eyebrows raised. Right. Why would he know?
“They’re a…they’re an illegal coven. Not one we want to get involved with. You remember a couple of years ago, when they found that—that kid, on Belden Hill?”
Terrible nodded, his eyes darkening. Not a surprise, that. Almost three years on nobody liked to think of what that child’s last hours must have been like.
“That was the Lamaru. We’re still not sure what they were doing, it looked like they were trying to force his soul into slavery or something, but the point is, they’re involved in this, and they’re not people anyone wants to mess with. They summoned the thief. And they have an ally in the Church, somebody I work with. They tried to attack me tonight at the Church library.”
Quickly she sketched out the story for him, eliminating her terror in the dark and making it sound as though she’d heard about the tunnels from one of the Elders. She was inordinately proud of herself for remembering to do so, especially as looking back at what happened only a couple of hours before felt like trying to remember a story she’d been told once in childhood. “Only an employee could have gotten in.”
“How’d they know you there? They following you? Shit, Chess, you call me, aye? Don’t go off alone.”
She was going off alone, all right. Her head felt stuffed with cotton, her skin electric and so sensitive, the hair on her arm stood up when it brushed the wall beside her. She giggled, then tried to turn it into a cough, which failed when she actually choked. This struck her as even more amusing. It was several minutes and a sip of Terrible’s beer before she was able to speak.
“I didn’t see anyone following me, and I paid attention.”
“They waiting for you. At the library, aye? Knew you’d figure it out, so they just waited.”
“Someone would have noticed them there, I’m sure of it. Nobody’s supposed to be in there after dark, it’s—”
“Aye, but you there, and someone else, too.” He shook his head. “You ain’t count on no rules to save you, Chess. You oughta know that. Don’t know where your head was.”
Her head was floating off somewhere in the distance, bobbing along to the heavy beat of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Her entire body pounded along with it, so it was hard to concentrate, and she knew she’d been stupid and he was right, but the Church was
safe
, it was the only place in the whole world that had ever been entirely
safe
, didn’t he know that?
“So’s a lot of people in this one, them tonight and last night, too. Any guesses what they after?”
“No,” she admitted. “Well, yes, but no. The Lamaru… they’re an anti-Church organization. You know, like some of those groups who run protests sometimes?”
He nodded. “Hear on em, aye.”
“Right. But the Lamaru isn’t in it to get money or publicity or whatever reason. They want to overthrow the Church, they’ve been trying for years to take over, but I have no idea why they would want to call a Dreamthief. He’s deadly, you know. Eventually you just…you just stop sleeping out of fear, and you can’t dream anyway when you do sleep, and you get so tired he sucks you into permanent sleep and feeds off you until you die. No dreams…”
“Your brain ain’t recharge itself.” He peered at her a little more closely. “How long since you slept right?”
“I never sleep.”
“You look like you ain’t been sleeping at all, not like usual.”
“I’m fine.” How long had it been, really? Only a few days. And she’d been doing so much speed, a lot more than normal. “I’m fine,” she said again.
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t respond. “So this thing, he attached to that book? He what Slipknot’s soul powering?”
She nodded.
“Bump wanting an update. He—he’s getting on the impatient side, dig. Wanting me to bring you in to him, find out when you plan on clearing all up.”
“Impatient?” She was so high she actually smiled a little. “Did he tell you to lean on me?”
Terrible shrugged, but wouldn’t look at her. There was her answer. “Getting impatient, is all.”
“Yeah, okay. I can see him tomorrow, no problem.”
“Hey, I think I gotta line on somebody maybe tell us something about the ghosts at Chester. You know Old-timer Earl?” When she shook her head he continued. “Been living here since before Chester opened, way back in the when. Word is he might know what’s up. Tomorrow we find him, aye? After seeing Bump? Maybe he know how this connects to yon Dreamthief, maybe he downing them planes?”
“There might not be a connection at all. Could be they just decided it was a good place to do their ritual.”
“Possible he’s brought them ghosts with him, making them stronger or aught like that?”
“It didn’t say anything in
Tobin’s Spirit Guide
about him being able to control other spirits, but he’d sure upset them, stir them up. You raise a ghost somewhere, you’re going to cause problems with other ghosts that might be around—especially if you do a ritual like that. That life force sitting at the bottom of a well, but connected to him so they can’t get at it…”
“Piss em off right, aye?”
“Yeah. But as for making them stronger, I don’t know. I guess it’s possible. It’s more likely he would…He might be feeding off them. Or—No, that doesn’t make any sense.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I keep feeling like if I had one piece of information, it would lead me to find the other pieces, but I don’t even know what that piece could be or where to look.” She pictured pieces bobbing in the air in front of her, and had to fight not to reach out and try to grab them. That would look weird. She didn’t want him to think she was behaving strangely. What happened to them earlier didn’t seem to be affecting him at all.
Someone brushed past them on their way to the bathroom, breaking her concentration. “What?”
“Where you think we might find that? You got any ideas in the people you work with? Maybe some of them shady? We can check them out.”
“We? Did Bump tell you to shadow me or something? Why are you so into this?”
He shrugged, but his gaze skittered away from her to the floor and his hands burrowed deep into his pockets. “Something different, aye? Solving a mystery.”
“Scary, though,” she said, and the words hurt. “Scarier than anything I’ve ever done.”
“Naw. We keep our heads, we stay safe. No reason for that.”
Chess didn’t know how it happened. It didn’t even make any sense that it would have happened. She lifted her hand to his chest, hard and hot beneath the black fabric of his shirt. She opened her mouth and looked up at him, ready to say something—to thank him, or to ask what time he’d pick her up in the morning, or just to make some sort of joke.
But nothing came out. Nothing came out, because her eyes met his and it felt like he’d looked all the way through her. Nothing came out because her back was slammed against the wall and her arms were wrapped around his neck and his lips were on hers, ruthless and tender and demanding all at once, and now she really was flying, up toward the ceiling, out of the building.
Lust exploded through her body, as if he’d somehow flipped a switch when his hands found the small of her back. Nothing existed in her head but Terrible, his tongue now sliding into her mouth with a skill she never would have expected, his fists gripping the back of her shirt and pulling her even closer to the monolithic wall of his body, as if they could fuse together from the heat and pressure between them.
Her fingers slipped through his hair, down across the nape of his neck, under the collar of his shirt to feel the scarred flesh of his back. With a gasp he lifted her, curving his palms under her thighs, then shifted so one hand supported her behind and the other raised to tangle in her hair. She wrapped her legs around his narrow waist and held on, pressing his pelvis against hers. Damn. Six feet four and everything in proportion, the quote went. It was true in this case. She couldn’t seem to get enough air. She didn’t think she needed air, not when he was holding her, possessing her, making her feel safer than she’d ever felt.
“Chess,” he mumbled. His lips traveled away, down the side of her throat, eliciting buzzing tingles that made her entire body vibrate, and back up to steal her mouth again. “Chessie. Never thought…so pretty…”
The low rumble of his voice made her vibrate more, and she clung to him tighter, certain that if she let go, she would fall, and keep falling all the way through the floor.
This couldn’t be right, this had to be the drugs, or maybe he was making it worse, she didn’t know, but she had some vague idea in her head that if he didn’t agree to take her back to his place in the next minute, she might actually die. His hips rolled against her in a slow, easy rhythm, turning the flames in her body even higher.
He was still mumbling, kissing her collarbones, nibbling at her throat with surprising delicacy, when she summoned the courage to remove one of her hands from his shoulder. His arms bulged beneath her palm as she slid it down, finally wedging it into the miniscule space between them so she could feel the ridge of his erection hot through his jeans.
“Terrible,” she managed. “You know how to use this thing?”
He pulled away to meet her gaze, and for a minute he was transformed. Still the same features, the lumpy nose and the jutting brow and the hard, dark eyes, but not ugly anymore. Full of character. Full of strength. She looked at his face but she didn’t see it, not the way she had before. The smile spreading across his features was intimate, sexy. The darkness of his eyes concealed so much more than she’d ever imagined.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “You gonna let me show you?”
She giggled, a single gasping little laugh, as every internal organ she had flipped. “You know, I think I am. Can’t get any crazier, right?”
His smile faltered, just a stutter, then came back. “Guessing not. Come on, let us get outta here.”
He pulled away, setting her back on her unsteady legs. She almost fell.
“Oops.” Her giggle lasted longer this time. “Oops, my legs are kind of weak. D’you think you can give me a minute?”
She looked up, expecting to see him laughing, too, but his eyes narrowed instead. She imagined for a second that they narrowed because all of his extra skin was needed for that incredible bulge in his jeans, and that made her laugh even harder, until she had to stretch out a hand and grab his to keep from tumbling to the floor in a heap.
“Chess.”
“Just a minute, Chess will be back in a minute, okay?” What on earth was so funny? Why couldn’t she stop laughing? It was getting hard to breathe.
“You fucked up, Chess?”
“Who, me? Noooo…” She shook her head, trying to look solemn and honest but unable to wipe the grin off her face.
“What’d you take? What you on?”
The look on his face stopped the giggles, anyway. Had she imagined that glimpse she’d caught of that other Terrible? Because he looked as forbidding now as if he’d been an Elder catching her wasted in a bar trying desperately not to pee herself laughing.