Stacia Kane: Unholy Ghosts

Her right hand hit the edge of the firedish. Pain roared up her arm, bringing her back. She focused everything she could on cutting the invisible cord binding them, renouncing him.

It gave, with a sharp pang like a rubber glove snapping back into place. Her eyes filled with tears and dragged back into focus just in time to see the ragged hole, to see Slipknot reaching for her, trying to go back to the world he knew, as the dog gripped his arm in its heavy jaws and dragged him down into the emptiness of silent death.

Her vision flipped to black for a moment, the blackness of sleep. Not her sleep; the sleep of the thief, the sleep of those whose power he was using. Without Slipknot there to filter it, the full weight of the blood connection fell to her. Oh, fuck…

Flashes of dreams, images of people in their beds, hundreds of them, uneasy on rumpled damp bedsheets, curled into balls on hard streets. She struggled to get it under control, to return to herself. Her hands twisted on each other, her muscles shook. Finally she pressed her left thumb into the palm of her right hand, sending screaming pain up her arm from the wound.

It worked. Her sight returned. She slammed back into herself, into the circle, and realized with both Slipknot and the dog gone, some of the power lessened, enough for her to take a breath. The cauldron burned her uninjured left hand as she lifted it, tipping its contents into the firedish and adding a handful of dried melidia.

Directly in front of her the blue wall wavered. They were close, so close, their shouts drowning out her thoughts. Her entire body shook. This was the dangerous part, and if she didn’t do it perfectly, didn’t end it now, the circle would be breached and she would lose. Lose and be lost.

The match head scraped across the rim of the firedish. “Ereshdiran,” she whispered, speaking his name for the first time. Just saying it hurt her tongue. “Ereshdiran kalepta barima .”

Someone shouted her name. Terrible. Terrible shouted her name. She opened her mouth to answer but her voice died in her throat. The thief appeared, his cloak moving in a breeze she could not feel, the hood thrown back to reveal shiny, pale skin stretched tight over the bones of his skull.

Something pulsed beneath that skin. Moving veins, veins that were not veins at all. They were worms, maggots like the ones in her hand. A low moan escaped her throat. He was going to eat her. He would drag her into the infested hell from whence he came and she would stay there, screaming while they overran her. While they ate her again and again, crawling under her skin too or burrowing through it, holes in her skin, holes in her brain…

She couldn’t stop staring at them, at his glittering hypnotic eyes and those teeth glowing in the dark blue-black air. Couldn’t stop seeing her own face reflected in them, miniature images of herself alone against a backdrop of nothing at all.

Hands appeared, long, curving fingers with bloodstained nails. They reached for her. She wanted to move but couldn’t, couldn’t even breathe. Even stuffed with adrenaline and speed as she was, her eyelids fluttered, her thoughts softened. Somewhere inside she knew what was happening, screamed and beat against her own flesh, but she could not will her body to obey.

Terrible shouted her name again, breaking the spell. She dropped the match. The melidia caught, sending a wall of flame into the air, separating Chess from the cruel infernal promise of those solid shark eyes.

She grabbed the amulet, ignoring the jolt of electric pain. Ignoring, too, the certainty that her cauterized wound would burst open again and worms would swarm. Flames seared her skin as she held the amulet over the firedish and summoned as much of the power circling through her as she could.

“Ereshdiran I command you to return. Return to your place of silence, return to your place of hiding, return to the place where you hold no power. I command this by fire, I command it by smoke. Return!”

She dropped the amulet into the flames.

A body flew into the circle, knocking her over. The blue wall disappeared. The circle had broken.

Her ears rang as the shouts and sounds of fighting, which had been muffled by the circle, slammed into them. Bodies ducked and danced around her, chaos destroying her stang and her careful arrangement. One of the fighting men stepped on her leg. She jerked it away, ignoring the pain, her eyes focused hard on what had been her altar.

The firedish fell over. The amulet spilled out, barely melted by the inferno that should have destroyed it.

Some instinct told her to yank her sleeve over her hand before she grabbed it. It wouldn’t lessen the heat much but it would hopefully keep the amulet’s design from imprinting her skin, possibly binding Ereshdiran to her forever instead of just until the amulet was destroyed.

Cold grass prickled her skin as she rolled away from the brawling bodies in what had been a ritual space. The Dreamthief followed. She caught a glimpse of him, pressing one talonlike finger against the head of a fighter, knocking him into sleep. A knife fell from the fighter’s hand—he was one of the Lamaru, not Bump’s—and Ereshdiran picked it up, flipping it expertly in his hand and stalking toward her.

She had the amulet. She had it, and he was bound to her, which meant supposedly she could control him, but she knew it wouldn’t work. Just to be certain, she tried it, shouting the Banishing words with every bit of breath and power she had. He didn’t so much as flicker.

Her feet pounded the ground as she turned left, making a wide circle around the brawling bodies. Blood flew through the air, weapons caught the moon like strobe lights. The air was heavy with sweat and blood and hot pain, thick with energy unlike anything she’d ever felt. Above her several birds flew in formation, avian psychopomps collecting souls. Death stalked the runways, death hovered overhead, and Ereshdiran did not halt his steady advance.

He was playing with her, waiting for her to tire out, taking whatever power he needed from the men nearby. Not as many of them as it had looked originally, but none of the men seemed ready to admit defeat. Bump’s men were powered by speed and loyalty, and the Lamaru, she had no idea but she guessed it was rage and greed and any number of illicit magics.

The thief turned, heading in her direction, and she saw her opening. She ducked down, narrowly avoiding being clipped in the head by a fist, and ran as hard as she could back to the remains of her altar. She had some melidia left, some crow’s bone and corrideira. They might give her enough strength to Banish him for a few minutes, long enough for her to set the fire back up, cast another circle.

She darted past another fighting couple and grabbed what she could. A heavy body fell on her. One of Bump’s men, out cold or dead. She didn’t know which. All she knew was the ground swooped up from its rightful place and hit her, the edge of the amulet sliced through her shirt to bite her skin deep, and the thief was closing in on her with a triumphant smile as her blood poured over his amulet again.

Her stomach burned, so hot it felt cold, as something in her gut shifted and moved. He was drawing from her, using her, strengthening their bond. She felt herself being sucked into the raging caverns of his black eyes, sucked in and thrown into the dreams of the city’s sleepers.

Voices raised behind her, as if the witches sensed what had happened. A chant, words of power, flying into the air and gathering strength. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs refused to expand, her limbs did not want to move. She tried to crawl forward but fell, unable even to support herself.