Stacia Kane: Unholy Ghosts

Below her in the earth, power still lurked. She’d felt it earlier when she cast the circle, she knew it was there. Her tired mind rebelled, against what she didn’t even know anymore and wasn’t sure it mattered. This was it, she’d lost. She was bound to him, connected, and he would drain her dry like a fucking battery and turn his attentions to someone else, to everyone else. And her soul, that worthless little thing, would be trapped here in her wasting body. Not in the City but without any of the reasons to stay out of the City. No pills. No smoke. No nothing that made life worth living. Just a soul, stuck perhaps at the bottom of that well forever. Stuck here at the airport.

In her left hand she clasped the ingredients she’d grabbed. Blood still trickled from her pinky and dripped to the dirt. Her blood, feeding the earth. Her blood, feeding the Dreamthief. The earth…haunted…the City beneath it and the Lamaru’s plan to set the spirits free…

“Chess! Chess!” Terrible’s roar, audible over the interrupted chants. At least someone was looking for her, someone noticed. What had he said they called them, the pilots? Flying aces? At least she’d done something right, at least she’d learned what was really haunting the airport…flying aces. Dozens of them. Here. Aces in the hole. Aces up the sleeve. She could certainly use one of those.

Aces who still haunted here, above the ground. Aces who hadn’t gone below to the City. The words kept circling in her head, like they should mean something, like she was trying to tell herself something but couldn’t get through the thick, black static of the thief’s connection.

She forced herself to relax and rest her forehead on the ground. The City. The murderous ghosts, the Lamaru controlling ghosts…controlling what they summoned…

The smell of dirt, dirt and smoke and green things, filled her nose, cleared her head just enough for her to open up, to focus on her pinky and her blood as it poured into the earth.

Her swirling thoughts snapped into place. The airport was haunted. Real ghosts. Real ghosts who’d been here for just over a hundred years, who’d been created when the place burned, when…sleep deprivation caused madness. Madmen who died sometimes splintered apart, became something else, twisted and merged and formed new entities.

Like Dreamthieves.

If this was where he’d come from, if he was made from discarded parts of the airport’s ghosts, they would seek to reabsorb him. They would overpower him, dissolve him.

If she was right. If she wasn’t…if she wasn’t she’d just better hope she was strong enough, because an entire battalion of ghosts would take them all out, every living person on the field, in about two minutes.

Fuck it. She didn’t have a choice, did she? Story of her life. Either the thief and Lamaru would kill them all or the ghosts would, but at least with the ghosts she had a chance. She forced energy into her blood, into the earth, and opened herself to it as wide as she could, waiting for it to leap back into her, to flood her senses. Waiting for it the way she waited for her pills to dissolve, every muscle in her body tense and expectant—but this would be more than her pills, more than any drug. The ultimate rush. The Summoning words hesitated on her tongue, ready to leap from her mouth into the air the second the power hit her.

Nothing happened. She could feel the thief advancing, knew he would be on top of her any second. This had to work, had to work, she had no idea how she would fix it later or what it might mean to Bump or Lex if she did, but at least she might be alive to do so, relax…

Energy surged up from the ground, into her finger, through her. Earth power, solid power. The kind spirits could not draw on, not like humans could. It was their prison, they could not pass through it and they could not use it.

She flipped over. The thief was there, only a few feet away. Not much time at all. Her fingers closed around a match, scraped it on her jeans, touched it to the herbs spilling from her hand.

“ Kadira tam! Kadira tam! You are compelled! With blood I summon you and with blood I compel you!” Wind tore the last words from her throat. Nothing happened.

Shit. She’d never done it before, was breaking half a dozen Church laws by even attempting to do it now.

The Dreamthief stood directly above her, knife at the ready. She raised her leg, trying to kick him away, but it passed through him. Only the knife and the hand holding it were solid. Good.

She lay back, as though too weak and afraid to do anything else, and waited for him to lunge. The opening would come, be ready…

He moved, dropping down, and she shoved herself up as hard as she could. His blade sliced her arm but she barely noticed, too distracted by the freezing pain of passing directly through him.

She didn’t bother to break her fall as she came out behind him, but let herself land on her chest with a thud. The rest of the melidia was still there on the ground, it might be enough.

Over the now-quieting shouts of the fighting men came another sound, a low, heavy buzz like a drill. She ignored it. She’d failed, but she was still alive, and she would not go down without a fight. If he was connected to her she could unconnect him.

The melidia was there. The black chalk was gone, but she had her knife. Not the best option but an option.

The buzzing drone grew louder, drowning out everything else. Chess grabbed her knife and brought the point to her left arm, gritting her teeth against the pain, glancing up to watch the Dreamthief pick himself up off the ground.

Hands on her, barely closing around her shoulders before an ugly crack rent the air. The witch’s body crumpled to the ground, his head twisted sideways. Terrible’s feet by her leg. He’d broken the man’s neck.

She slid the knife along her arm. Up, over, down…a Bind rune, a protective rune, a rune of purity, slashed into her flesh. Agony grabbed hold of her with sharp teeth and made her vision waver as the runes warred with the thief’s evil tinge in her blood.

Wind swept over her skin, whipped her hair around her face. She grabbed the melidia and leapt to her feet, stumbling over bodies as the thief lunged for her again. His knife drove into the spot where she was only seconds before.

That was when she realized no one was fighting. They’d stopped. They’d stopped, and they were staring at the sky as planes droned and swooped overhead, so many it seemed the sky was made of them. They were looking up.

It had worked. The ghosts had come.

Ducking her head, she weaved through the men and dumped the last of the melidia out of the Baggie when she reached the edge of the crowd. It lit with a hiss. She squeezed the wound on her pinky, dripping blood on the pile, and dropped the amulet into it.

Flesh smacked against flesh behind her. Her head turned instinctively and she saw Terrible again, his teeth bared in pain and rage, his hands closed around the thief’s lone solid hand hovering above her head.

The thief disappeared.

White lights turned the runway into an alien landscape, colorless and bizarre, as the first plane dove in for a landing. Men scattered, resuming their fighting in twos and threes.

“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!”

Another plane, and another. Spectral men emerged, climbing from the open holes as the propellers slowed.

Ereshdiran reappeared, at her side. He’d lost the knife when he disappeared, but his teeth looked solid enough, as well as both of his hands.

Chess steeled herself and grabbed them, like dipping her hands into dry ice. She reached for the power in the ground, reached for the dead pilots, and drew them in.