Stacia Kane - Unholy Ghosts

The pride in his voice, even after everything that had happened, made her wince. “Randy…”

“No, don’t ‘Randy’ me, don’t you fucking ‘Randy’ me! The Lamaru needed me, they promised me—they promised me everything. And they gave it to me, too. When they take over, I’ll be a leader. I’ll be in charge.” His defiance sent fresh waves of terror pumping through her blood. Nothing in the world was more dangerous than someone who believed they were about to get everything they wanted—someone who believed in the empty promises of madmen.

Without looking away, Chess knelt slowly by her bag and reached for it with her stiff and aching right hand. It took her two tries to close her fingers over the tongue of the zipper.

Randy glared at her. “First you take my case, just wave those miniscule tits at Elder Griffin and get handed the case that should have been mine, then you poke around that airport and power up my ghost. We had him, don’t you understand? We had him under control, until you did that!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, because it seemed to be what he wanted. What was she supposed to say?

Her stiff fingers closed over the cloth-wrapped amulet. When she handed this to him he would kill her. Slit her throat, probably, then be ready to stab Terrible when Terrible leapt for him. And it would look like Ereshdiran did it somehow, or at least that’s what Randy would say, and why would anyone doubt him? The regular police didn’t have jurisdiction in Church matters at all.

“When the Lamaru are in charge, things will be different. No more laws regulating what magic people are allowed to do and what they’re allowed to believe in. No more lies, no more answers to questions that shouldn’t have them. Look around you, Chessie. Do you honestly think this is a good world we live in? Do you honestly think it’s good for people to obey laws out of fear, and to know exactly what happens when they die, and to believe in nothing but themselves and power? There’s no mystery. There’s no hope. It’s like a little hell, this world.” Randy shook his head, his lips curling.

“And the Lamaru want to put the mystery back, the hope. And they needed me to help them do it, me and my skills. Me, to show them how to get into the City, me to help raise the thief. What the fuck were you doing at that airport, anyway?”

“How did you get involved with them?” She wasn’t about to give him an answer, and she didn’t think he would notice. Her thinking might have been fuzzy from drugs sometimes, but Randy had left sanity behind a while ago.

For a minute Chess felt sorry for him. He was right. He had been something of a laughingstock at Church, like a mascot nobody took seriously. Then all of the sudden he had a family, and a powerful magic group wanting to learn from him, promising him power and wealth and respect…and now he couldn’t escape. They would kill him if he tried, and he knew it. Behind his boasts she heard the panic in his voice.

As for his comments about the world they lived in…she couldn’t even consider that. Such thoughts were heresy, and the Church had given her more hope than she’d ever known could exist. Maybe he had a point about answers, but then, if the answers were there, didn’t people have a right to them?

She glanced at Terrible again. This time he moved, flexing the fingers of his right hand. With his arms folded he was pointing to her right, where Randy crouched.

Where he crouched . He was only balancing on the balls of his feet. It would be simple to knock him off balance. If she could hit him—he had her right hand crowded, but she couldn’t use her right anyway. It was too difficult to bend her fingers. Her left, though, if she could swing around and catch him with a left, she might be able to knock him far enough away that Terrible could get him.

She blinked, hoping he read her agreement in it, and tensed her arms.

“I met one of them at the Sp—just give me my amulet.”

“I can help you, Randy.” Her mind whirred. So the Lamaru were meeting—or at least recruiting—at the Bankhead? Where did their money come from? She looked up, tried to catch his eyes with hers, but he refused to let her. “I can help you, we can get rid of them together, the Church will understand, they’ll—”

“Shut up!” His free hand raised, preparing to strike. Terrible made a sound low in his throat, but she didn’t dare look at him, and Randy dropped his hand back to her neck.

“I can help—”

“You don’t get it, do you, you stupid bitch? I don’t want your help . All this—all this mess, it’s your fault, and they’re holding me responsible for it, and if you don’t give me that amulet they’ll kill me, too, not just—” He snapped his mouth shut, like he was about to reveal a secret. Like she didn’t already know the Lamaru wanted her dead. “Just give it to me. They need me. I can talk to them, I can tell them it was an accident and you don’t know anything.”

Yeah. She believed that one. She drew in a shaky breath. “Okay. Here it is.”

She twisted her upper body, crowding him with her right side as she pretended she was going to give him the amulet with her right hand. He was holding the knife in his right hand, so had to take his left off her neck to make an awkward attempt to collect the amulet.

She’d never been very good with her fists, much preferring weapons, but she made do with what she had, driving her left across her body. It felt unnatural and strange, but it worked. Her fist connected with his eye, knocking him backward. Chess let the amulet fall from her hand and grabbed her knife, driving it forward, but Randy was too fast. He caught her hand and squeezed.

The butt of the knife slammed into her injured palm. Pain clouded her vision. She screamed and rolled sideways, trying to pull away from him, but he squeezed harder. Through a haze of tears she saw his face, his lips twisted in rage. He raised his right hand. Moonlight hit the edge of the blade.

Terrible grabbed him, lifted him, threw him. Randy hit the wall with a room-shaking thud and fell back to the floor. It would have been comical if he hadn’t sprung back up so quickly.

He made a sound somewhere between a howl and a scream and lifted the knife, but Terrible was too fast. He shoved himself forward, one hand grabbing Randy’s wrist while his big shoulders pushed Randy back to the wall again. He slammed Randy’s hand against it hard enough to crack the plaster. The knife fell to the floor.

Randy’s left hand pounded at Terrible’s back, stopping only when the tip of Terrible’s blade hit his throat.

“What action you want?”

“We’ll bring him with us,” Chess said. “I think I saw some rope downstairs. We’ll tie him up, and he can come along and send the Dreamthief back.”

“You can’t send him back,” Randy said. “Don’t you understand? Without the amulet we don’t have the control we had. He’s getting stronger, you saw what he did to my mom down there. We have him trapped, but he’s breaking free, I need the amulet to—”

The lights snapped off. All the lights, leaving them standing alone with the warm darkness breathing around them. Her skin burned and itched along the lines of her tattoos.

Randy’s whisper crackled like dead leaves. “He’s here.”

The amulet had fallen to the floor in the struggle. Chess knelt and ran her fingers over the carpet. Her back felt like someone had painted a target on it. Where was Ereshdiran? In front of her, those long stained-ivory teeth exposed? Behind her, about to summon enough power to slip a noose around her neck, to slit her throat?