Stacia Kane - City of Ghosts

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

She pressed her back against the cool wall, tried to look casual. Torture. She could handle that. She’d gotten good with it, hadn’t she? A childhood like hers demanded it. She could leave her body if she had to, leave the pain behind, ignore it all. Once that trick was mastered it never left. “Pretty sure I do.”

Lauren smiled and lifted her hands. The sleeves of her robe fell to her elbows, exposing her pale, unmarked inner forearms and wrists. “I think the First Elders would disagree with you.”

Chess didn’t know how much time had passed. Twenty minutes? Or several hours? It was nothing more than a blur. Her stomach roiled and twisted. The First Elders would kill her. With pain. Consign her to a spirit prison; she’d be tortured for hundreds of years, roasted in fires, run through with iron … Who knew what other surprises they had planned for one who broke a Binding Oath?

They hadn’t shown up yet. She knew they would. Sooner or later—probably sooner—she’d stop finding questions she could safely answer.

“You’re being ridiculous, Cesaria.” Lauren waved the syringe in front of her. “You don’t have to die like this. And you don’t have to go to spirit prison. Just tell us what we want to know and it can end so much more pleasantly.”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Chess said, and bit her lip hard enough to cut it when more pain shot up her arms. Her clothes and the carpet around her were soaked with her blood; the TV cabinet she’d huddled next to was spattered with it. She tried to remember that a little blood spilled looked like a lot, but it wasn’t easy when the spilled blood in question was hers. “I don’t know anything.”

“But I think you do. You said you found Erik dead. You saw him. What happened to him?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I think I do. I wouldn’t have asked otherwise, right?”

What information could they get from that? They knew Vanhelm was dead. Would knowing about his posthumous—so she assumed—organ donation really make a difference?

It might. No way to tell. They’d asked her so many things, it was all starting to run together. She couldn’t seem to keep straight what she’d told them and what she hadn’t, what she should and what she shouldn’t.

But she hadn’t mentioned Lex or Terrible. And she hadn’t mentioned Baldarel. She had no idea if she should.

Part of her thought it didn’t matter, that she should tell them. Drop that bomb in their laps, let them fight it out. Maybe they’d kill one another and forget about whatever it was they planned to do at the Church.

But it didn’t feel right. She kept thinking that if they didn’t know what he was up to, who they were really dealing with, there was power in that. Power for her, for the Church. There had to be some way to use their ignorance against them, to lead them astray. To give herself enough time to escape—yeah, like that was going to happen—or for … for something. Anything.

In the end she could only go with what she felt was right. And something told her not to give them Baldarel. At least not at the moment. When the First Elders showed up she might change her tune.

“Was anyone with you?”

“No.” Oh, shit … that was worse, it was so much worse, like being shot up with acid, searing up her arms. Blood spattered from the wounds, thicker, faster now. Some vague part of her mind thought it might be because that was a double lie; she’d betrayed the Oath by taking people with her into the tunnels, and now she was betraying it again by lying about it.

The rest of her mind didn’t care because that was agony, tearing into her with relentless sharp teeth and ripping her apart like a lion with a raw steak. She threw up on the carpet, she was dizzy, she couldn’t think …

“Who was with you, Cesaria? Who knows about us?”

“Nobody.” She was going to die. Right there. Right then. She was going to die, because the insistent tone of Lauren’s voice and the way she leaned forward made it very clear that Lauren knew she was on to something, that the question of who else knew was more important than Chess had originally thought.

Why did she care so much? If the Lamaru were engaged in yet another plan to destroy the Church and take over, why did they care if someone knew about it? Why not just kill her and start doing whatever it was they were going to do before anyone had a chance to warn them?

The answer came from somewhere outside her; the part of her still capable of rational thought, the part that had escaped her body. They needed to know because they couldn’t start yet . For whatever reason, things weren’t quite ready; they had to wait for something, and they were afraid someone would stop them before—

“Elder Murray’s Dedication,” she gasped, fighting the fresh pain in her arms and the hot gush of more blood from her wrists. Oh, it was so awful, she was filthy and disgusting and she didn’t want to die like that. But the Lamaru men were in the room, they were not authorized to hear what she had to say, and it didn’t matter that they knew already because she was talking to them and that was enough for the Binding to activate. “It’s Elder Murray’s Dedication, isn’t it? What you’re waiting for? Why you can’t—”

Lauren’s slap barely hurt; what was one more source of pain? “Who did you tell?”

“You planted that ghost at the execution. And the psychopomp, right? A test or something.” Yes. It probably was Lauren—Lauren, who’d been in town earlier than she’d originally claimed and wouldn’t have had to sign in to see—No, no, that didn’t make sense, because Lauren’s father hadn’t known she was in town. Maybe it was someone else, someone whose name she didn’t recognize, and Maguinness had been there simply to mislead.

Something flickered in the air to her right. Fresh energy flicked over her skin, tasting it. Ghost energy, making her tattoos itch and tingle.

The First Elders were coming. Yes.

Lauren saw it, too. “Who did you tell? If you tell us, you don’t have to go to spirit prison—we’ll let you live if you tell us. Just tell us. Who knows?”

“You planted the ghost so it would—would kill one of us.” The last word turned into a scream. The pain was worsening. She had to finish. The First Elders would appear any second and they would take her. She didn’t want to go, shit she didn’t want to go and she was so scared. So fucking scared and alone but she didn’t have a choice. She had to force an end to this.

Had to end it now before they got her to admit that Lex and Terrible both knew what was happening, or at least had some idea. That either one of them might go to the Church. They both knew Doyle; she’d told Terrible to go to him before. She knew he would if he realized something had happened to her. Knew that despite the awkwardness he still cared enough to do that for her.

Keeping the Lamaru from attacking the Church was one thing, an important thing. Keeping the Lamaru from finding Terrible or Lex—that was something else entirely.

That was something she had to do, and would die to do. Was going to die to do.

She clenched her fists, putting all the strength she had left into her hands to try to fight the pain so she could speak. “You had to kill one of us. Any one of us. You needed—you needed a Dedication, you needed that much power. Right? That was your plan, right?”