Stacia Kane: City of Ghosts

Pain exploded in the back of her skull. The scene before her disappeared; red lights flashed and dirt filled her mouth as she pitched forward. Her already burned thigh hit the firedish and glanced off. Feebly she cried out, tried to roll away, but hard hands held her there; one gripped her hair and shoved her face into the dirt. She had no idea whether it was the Lamaru or the Church.

With a stomach-churning effort she flipped herself over, swung her right arm in an arc. It connected, cracked so hard she thought her bones might have shattered.

More arms on her, fighting her. An iron candlestick rested on the ground nearby. She grabbed it and swung, not caring if it hit anyone but just thrilled to be doing something.

One of the Lamaru grabbed the candlestick, tried to yank it away from her. She let him pull her to her feet and kept going, ramming herself into him.

Her firedish blazed now, thick tingly smoke filling the air. She couldn’t see if it made a difference to the psychopomps, couldn’t see anything but the black-robed man before her. Couldn’t think of anything but the intense and impersonal need to bash his head with the candlestick as hard as she could.

Instead she brought her knee up and rammed it into his balls, then swung away from him before he had time to fall.

Elder Griffin’s head appeared, light shining from his pale hair. Chess tucked the candlestick under her arm and ran for him, using the thing as a spear to clear her path.

He’d acquired a ritual knife somewhere and was using it to slash at two Lamaru who were slowly trying to back him up against the wall. She charged at them, swinging the candlestick like a baseball bat. His face darkened when he saw her; the knife lifted.

“No!” She managed to duck away, holding the candlestick, not wanting to hit him but terrified he’d kill her before she could speak. A fist glanced off her cheek, she jumped back. Shit, there were too many of them, too many Lamaru.

Too many ghosts. Spectral hands closed over the candlestick and leapt back as the iron burned them. The thing turned rage-filled eyes on her, lunged at her; her tattoos screamed even louder, searing her skin as her blood turned ice-cold from the ghostly contact.

It tried to grab her, possess her. She felt it. Shit. Her tattoos held. What about the wards she’d inscribed on the men? What about—

Terrible. She took a chance and turned her attention away from Elder Griffin for a moment, looking for him; saw him raising his bloody knife above his head and driving it down into a black-robed chest. Still fighting. Still alive, still himself.

Elder Griffin grabbed her by the neck, threw her to the ground. For a second she just stared at him, shocked. He’d never touched her in anger, never done anything to make her suspect he even had it in him. And the old reaction came back; she wanted to curl up into a ball, hide, make herself invisible, take the punishment and make it end faster.

But then he raised that ceremonial knife above her heart and plunged it down.

“It wasn’t me!” No time to roll away, she raised her hands and grabbed his wrist.

He was too strong for her; the knife continued to descend, slowed but not stopped. “Elder Griffin, it’s me, it’s Chess, that wasn’t me, it was Lauren—”

Desperately she tried to meet the cold blue chips of his eyes, to make him see her, who she really was.

It didn’t work. Shit. Her stomach twisted; she brought her legs up and kicked his arm away from her. Kicked him away from her with a crunch that reverberated in her mind, digging itself down deep into that hidden place where guilt and shame constantly bubbled and seethed. His arms around her at the Binding, holding her, his soothing voice …

No time to stop, no time to try again. He was already staggering back toward her. Instead she ran through the thickening smoke, passing through ghosts, knocking against unfamiliar bodies. Dogs brushed her legs but ignored her, searching instead for their dead prey.

And the dead prey appeared, drawn by the tang of blood and life in the air, gathering in ever-deepening hordes and pushing their way through. Getting aggressive. Cold hands reached for her, tried to grab her. The iron candlestick in her hand grew hot from the constant warding, so hot it was hard to hold.

This was useless. She could hope to defeat the Lamaru, but she couldn’t hope to beat their ghost-mauling psychopomps, psychopomps behaving in ways she’d never seen, who felt like nothing she’d ever felt, whose purpose was the utter destruction of everything the Church was built on. The Elders and Church employees were gathered around the firedish she’d started, chanting, sending waves of almost unbearable power rolling over her, making every step she took a struggle, yet it barely seemed to have an effect on the murderous psychopomps. Ghost parts littered the ground; every step was like dipping her feet into icy water. Her eyes filled with tears. Now that she had a second to stop, she was exhausted; all the energy she’d exerted already, all she needed just to keep moving, was too much even for the speed she’d taken.

She stumbled over her own feet. Her stomach roiled, nausea overwhelming her. The fight went on around her and she pressed herself against the dirt wall, wanting to stay out of it. Or rather, not wanting to, but feeling she should. She’d been kidding herself that she could change things down there. Nothing she could do. She’d failed, she was a failure, and she’d—

Lauren .

What made her look she didn’t know, but she did, and caught sight of Lauren—of herself—at the periphery of the fighting crowd. If anything could galvanize her, that was it, that bitch. There Chess was blaming herself, and it was Lauren’s fault, Lauren’s plan, Lauren’s doing. And not only had she done it, she’d done it disguised as Chess.

Rage cranked her heartbeat back to a rapid pump and she took off past the ghosts and psychopomps, pushing bodies out of the way. Fuck them. At that moment she didn’t give a shit what happened to anyone, anywhere, as long as she got to settle her hands around Lauren’s miserable fucking throat and squeeze until she didn’t have any strength left.

Lauren turned; their eyes met. Chess almost fell. Staring at herself, at this perfect doppelganger—a shiver of pure terror jerked through her body. Doppelgangers were harbingers of death. Bad luck. Every magical instinct she had, honed by six years of Church training and three as an employee, told her to turn the fuck around and get away as fast as she could, that to look at her doppelganger was to curse herself, that some things couldn’t be unseen and that was one of them, forever hanging over her like the guillotine’s blade.

But only for a second. That wasn’t her, it was Lauren, and if one of them was going to die it sure as fuck wouldn’t be Chess—at least not if she could help it. Her feet found their way again. She dashed around the mass of fighting men, glimpsed Lex a few feet away, kept going.

Lauren hunched down, spreading her hands, ready. At the last second Chess dodged to the side, pivoted around her, grabbed her hair and yanked it back as hard as she could.

Her left eye exploded as Lauren’s fist shot straight up, stunning her. Her grip loosened, but just for a second. She still had that hair and she wasn’t letting go. Lauren fell on her back onto the ground, and Chess, gripping her hair, spun around and yanked her knife from her pocket with her free hand.

The point pressed into Lauren’s neck, her own eyes stared back at her. “Tell me how to stop them.”