Stacia Kane: City of Ghosts

They moved in a slow circle, chanting. Words of power bounced off the smooth dirt walls, rose hundreds of feet into the air and crashed against the distant ceiling. Some of the light came from the candles inside the salt circle the Church employees had laid; she knew how thick the line would be, knew that at least two Elders stood outside it, not participating in the ceremony itself, their only job to continue feeding power into that circle to keep it strong.

More dim light came from the wards crisscrossing every inch of the walls and ceiling, strengthening the power of the earth itself, glowing blue with that same power.

The strongest illumination came from the ghosts. Below the surface of the earth they glowed more brightly than they did above it, each of them a phosphorescent bulb in human form, flowing through the air. Ghosts milled around the enormous space, drifted through the vast emptiness, floated just above the ground. They clung to the blank uneven walls in unwelcoming clumps; they glared at the ceremony. Their anger was overwhelming, subdued though it was by the City’s powerful wards and by the earth itself. Outside the City, ghosts below the ground were more powerful, more dangerous—the reason basements and underground structures were illegal. But inside the City they were neutralized—at least until someone made a mistake and provided them with a weapon, or the means to escape through either set of doors guarding the train tracks.

There was nothing to hide behind as Chess led the men toward the ceremony. No boulders, no ditches, no piles of dirt. The City contained no topography, possessed no visual interest. It was an ice-blue neon hell, so cold her nose felt numb, so enormous she had never seen where it ended.

They slid against the wall of the Liaising Station, its solidity behind her back a false comfort. In a minute they’d be past it, out in the open; they’d be seen. She had no idea how their presence would be welcomed.

Already some of the ghosts had noticed them. Furious as they were at the presence of Church employees, at the very idea that their home was being invaded by living people they could not touch, it had taken them longer than usual. Chess had hoped it might take even longer, but the life force she and the men carried with them stood out like a beacon, she knew, created waves that rippled through the empty air and brushed against the forms of the dead.

She halted at the end of the Liaising Station wall and turned around. Terrible and Lex hunched right behind her. Neither man appeared to notice the ghosts or the cold misery of the space; they watched her, waited for her, with an unshakable faith in their eyes that would have been comforting if she wasn’t pretty damn sure they were all about to die. What would Lauren do when they arrived? What would the Lamaru do? Were they here already, hidden beneath pale-blue robes in the circle?

“In a second we’ll be in the open,” she whispered. “We’ll need to run for it. But stop before we hit the circle, okay? Don’t break—”

Too late.

Power flared like a thousand-watt bulb being switched on. Her words ended in a strangled gasp as she spun around and almost fell. Terrible caught her shoulders; she felt him squeeze, glanced back just long enough to meet his eyes. One second of eye contact—all it took to rupture her heart.

Another throb of power. She snapped away from him, righted herself.

Above the circle hung the spectral forms of Elder Murray and the executioner. It was the high point of the Dedication, the moment when the last vestiges of their humanity were magically returned to them so they could bid their farewells before being relegated forever to the City.

But it didn’t take a Churchwitch to know something was wrong. As Elder Murray’s head touched the top of the circle—she could see the thin white-light shell of power above it—another voice rose even higher. A voice that sent chills of rage up her spine and made her start running before she was even aware she was doing it.

Her voice.

Her own fucking voice, screaming words of power so tinged with black energy they were like vomit spewing into the air. That energy sailed through the circle and shattered it. Confused shouts and screams erupted.

Something else erupted, too: three psychopomp ravens. Lauren’s psychopomps—or new ones, probably. They flew over the small crowd, through the thickening air, their eyes glowing red as they grabbed ghosts and lifted them. Carried them to the door, pushed the iron chains apart.

Chess felt the magical seal over the doors break, like a cable snapping.

Felt the doors open, and glanced back to see a black mass pour through the space and flow across the ground. The Lamaru. Saw ghosts begin to escape.

Not her problem—or rather, not her immediate problem. All she had time to worry about was herself, Lauren pretending to be her, smiling in triumph and raising a sword as the Elders and Church employees turned on her.

Some of her men passed her, heading for the black cloud of Lamaru almost at the broken circle. Her makeshift pouch bounced against her thighs, heavier than she’d thought it would be. She grabbed it and clutched it to her, her lungs ready to burst in her chest.

Her voice echoed again, impossibly loud. This time it was answered. Not just by the Lamaru joining in the chant—some of them, anyway, the ones who weren’t already raising weapons to attack the defenseless Church employees—but by the dogs.

Hundreds of them, their howls filling the air, crashing off the walls and ceiling and into her ears.

Each Lamaru must have carried dozens of skulls, all those she’d seen at Lauren’s and then some. What the fuck was the point of bringing in psychopomps when you were opening the City doors and letting the dead escape? What the fuck was—No, no time to think, it was too late for thinking.

The ghosts were moving, stirred and excited, blurring as they forgot their shapes and simply became masses of energy. Shit. Unshaped ghosts were incredibly dangerous; they grew extra arms or legs, merged with one another to form new beings, powerful ones. Was that the Lamaru’s plan? To set them all—No, why have psychopomps, which destroyed ghosts, if you wanted to set the ghosts free?

The Lamaru had reached the Church employees now. Some of Lex’s and Terrible’s men had, too—she saw weapons flash, heard screams of a different tenor.

But she barely paid attention, because worse than that, worse than all of it, was watching the dogs attack the ghosts, tearing them apart, savaging them. They weren’t setting the ghosts free, they weren’t worried about leaving the doors open, because they were destroying the ghosts, ripping them limb from spectral limb.

She hit the fray. Took a second she couldn’t afford to figure out what to do first. Some of the ghosts had found the iron candlesticks and were trying to pick them up and use them as weapons. One gripped a burning candle and waved it slowly in an arc.

That’s what she needed. Fire. The men were fighting the Lamaru already—shit, there were so many of them, more than she’d expected—but her fellow employees were still defenseless, without weapons of any kind or the types of herbs needed to truly subdue the dead. She had to find Elder Griffin or Elder Ramos, tell them what was happening.

The City was a bedlam of blue robes, black robes, dogs and ghosts and knives flashing like ice in the cold blue air. She ducked across the remnants of the salt line, grabbed one of the firedishes strewn on the dirt floor and righted it, yanking her lighter out of her pocket with her other hand.

Her pouch contained mistletoe, ground toad bones, and dried psychopomp flesh. She tossed them into the dish with some asafetida and fired them up, blowing gently to get them to catch faster and waving her hands in the smoke to spread it. She had no idea if it would be effective against the psychopomps now tearing their way through the hordes—