Stacia Kane: City of Ghosts

Baldarel might be connected to his body, but he wasn’t in it at that moment; that’s what made him a wraith and not simply a Host.

So where was his body?

Being able to return to it might grant him protection, at least somewhat, but it would limit his power. At that moment he was out of his body, he and whatever that thing was he’d hooked up with, that thing that combined with whatever soul-killing magic he’d worked to enable him to do what he was doing.

She ducked to avoid a fist, struggled to think past the ghosts speeding around her and the shouts and the sound of flesh against flesh, the smell of blood so thick in the air she could taste it. She had to be able to do something, had to be able to— Psychopomps .

Again. He had control over them, was able to somehow make them turn on the ghosts, to remove their careful training to make them harm ghosts instead of aid them, or to make them out of beasts whose instincts were to harm. Most animals weren’t used as psychopomps because they weren’t always effective in ritual, weren’t gentle or familiar, showed up early or late or failed to recognize the passport etched on the ghost’s skin and took the wrong spirit … but anything could be trained to be a psychopomp, in theory. All creatures had the capability to do it.

A heavy body fell into her, knocked her down. One of Lex’s men, locked in battle against a rabbity-looking man with a hole where his nose should have been and no chin. His arms, ending in bright knives clutched in his many-fingered fists, windmilled and spun, slashing the air, slashing the gang member’s robe. Chess interrupted her thoughts long enough to swing herself out of the way and drive her own knife into the enemy’s back. She caught the brief nod of thanks from Lex’s man and ducked back down to the firedish.

Anything could be a psychopomp. Psychopomps always beat ghosts, always.

To beat Baldarel they had to separate him from his ghost.

And what the fuck, it wasn’t like she had a lot of other options.

“I call on the escorts of the land of the dead!” Her voice barely registered in her ears. Shit, she had so little power left, all she had was adrenaline, and that might keep her awake but it didn’t do shit when it came to powering magic.

But magic was all around her, thick in the air. Baldarel’s magic. Could she …

Again. No other options. She closed her eyes, opened herself up, and started pulling at the energy around her, drawing it in, choking and gagging on it. It tasted like death and rot and sent horrible shivers down her spine, it burned her soul like acid.

But it was power, and when she tried again, her voice rang clear and loud in her ears. “I call on the escorts of the land of the dead! By my power and the power of the Church, by the power of air and earth, I call on you to take this man Baldarel back to his place of silence!”

A few of the beasts near her turned, looked at her. Was it her imagination or had the red light in their eyes faded?

“Escorts, I call you! By my blood and by my power, by my command you will take this man!”

She lifted her knife and sliced her palm over the firedish, barely feeling the pain through everything else. Her blood sizzled onto the burning herbs and raised thick clouds of purple smoke; her Bound blood, blood dedicated to the Church and mixed with the Church’s power.

Holy shit, she hadn’t thought of it before, hadn’t realized. By being Bound she had the Church in her, all of it, the power of the First Elders, the power of tradition, the power of every person in that room and of a magical system so complex and beautiful it brought her to tears.

Her blood was the Church’s blood. Her body was its body. Her power was its power, her soul its soul.

She raised her hand again, clenched her fist hard. She didn’t want to die. Did not want to die .

The blade of her knife, cold against the Binding scar. Searing, flashing, gut-wrenching pain as she sliced at the mark, digging deep so her blood spurted from the wound and into the fire, a thick pumping gush of it.

“By the Church and by my power I call the escorts! I command the escorts! Obey me now and take this man to his place of eternal silence!”

Power blasted through her like a lightning strike, a huge bright flash of it that stole her breath, stole her vision and voice. She floundered in it, struggling to keep her focus while the world shifted and the power erupted inside her like a geyser. She wasn’t Chess. She was the Church, every member, every employee, from its beginnings as an underground magic study group to that moment when it reigned supreme, and she would reign with it until her heart stopped pumping.

The tiny speck of consciousness that remained inside her brain knew that moment could be imminent. So much blood, so much smoke, the fire so bright it hurt.

The Binding marks burned ice cold. Through the blur of her tears she saw something move on her wrists, not just the lacy pattern but something else, oozing out with her blood, spectral forms: the First Elders. They’d put part of themselves into her. She’d thought the psychopomps at Lauren’s place had stolen their power and fed it back to her, but she’d been wrong, it had been the parts of them living in her blood that regrew and strengthened, and they formed themselves whole and towered over her, turned to join the crowd with a dignity that made her want to cry before another blinding rush of power tore into her flesh.

Baldarel pushed back. She felt herself flying, opened her eyes incuriously to see she was flying, her body twisting and turning on a wave of purple-black magic. Her apron fell off, spilled herbs and the fetish onto the ground. She ignored it. Who cared? Not she. She was too high to care, that was it—the ultimate rush, the ultimate high, the ultimate forget-it-all-fuck-it-all moment, and she didn’t want it ever to end. She pushed back at him, so easily, directing that tremendous force toward its creator and adding her own to it, and the First Elders joined her, all of them together. She felt the rip, felt the toad-magic break, felt him separate from his ghost with a shiver that kept going, running all over her body.

Screams rose from the ground below. She slammed against the smooth dirt wall, fell, didn’t feel it, didn’t care. To the screams were added howls, psychopomp howls: Baldarel’s beasts. She had no idea if that was a good sign or not.

And above it all, suddenly, came the Elders, chanting again. She felt each of them join in, felt all of them as a unit.

Another explosion.

The power disappeared in a flash. It … evaporated, left her there on the ground with tears running down her cheeks and blood still pumping from her wrist. She smelled ozone. Every nerve in her body felt fried to a crisp. She was a husk, the shed exoskeleton of an insect left to crumble into dust after its owner had outgrown it.

Around her the fight went on, but even she could see these were the last desultory stragglers, still forcing themselves to move in the haze of smoke and frantic ghosts. From where she sat all the way to the ragged hole in the City wall the ground was littered with bodies and ghost parts. The psychopomps were gone.

Baldarel was not. A flurry of movement near the hole drew her eye in time to see Elder Griffin and what looked like the Grand Elder tackle him to the ground. Elder Ramos whipped off his robe and used it to bind Baldarel’s wrists to his feet. Even from her seat she felt the emptiness around him.

Could she move? She wasn’t sure. Didn’t want to try, either. It was so comfortable there, her back nestled into a divot in the dirt wall, her legs bent in front of her. A good place to sit and watch. She was fine there, really.

At least until Elder Thompson, Dana Wright, and Agnew Doyle appeared before her, their faces twisted with rage.