“That bitch!”
Chess turned in her seat. “That’s what got your attention?”
“No, I just— What a bitch.”
“Yeah. Anyway. She must have set this whole thing up, right from the beginning. She seduced Bill Pritchard to get all those prescriptions for Aros, she started drugging him to make him crazy so he’d do what she wanted him to do. That’s why Aros didn’t have any problems before. I mean, that’s just a guess, but I think it’s right.”
Lex spun the car onto Ace, heading for Twenty-fifth to turn north again. The music drifting from the speakers changed to G. G. Allin’s “Hell in NYC.” How appropriate. Wrong city, but still appropriate.
What exactly were they facing? Aros and Monica, yes, and their magic. But probably Bump and Terrible, too, and she knew about it and Lex and Beulah didn’t, and that made her feel kind of shitty even though she knew she shouldn’t. “So, I think they’re going to be doing another ritual, another sacrifice, up there by Twenty-fifth.”
Lex’s eyes caught hers in the rearview. “Ain’t that what’s already on the happening? They done they murder, building caught up fire?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, of course.” Not telling him was one thing. Lying was another.
“So she’s doing all of this to bring Lucy back, then? Her and Wen,” Beulah said. Yes! A change of subject, that was just what was needed.
A change of subject, and her speed. She dug a bump from the little bag, braced her wrist to suck it back. And another. And a third for good luck.
“She’s not very strong, remember? The ghost. I bet Monica thinks this is just going to be enough power to make Lucy solid, maybe even let her talk. She thinks she can bring her back. She’s going to destroy the balance in the world just so she can play with her cousin again and Wen can fuck her or something.”
“Damn, that’s some sick— Fuck.”
“Yeah, I— Oh.”
He wasn’t calling Wen a sick fuck. He was looking ahead, at the flames scorching the sky, engulfing a building several blocks down. At the corner of Twenty-fifth and Mercer, she guessed, and just as the thought crossed her mind, another explosion, a louder one, rocked the street and sent debris and fire flying into the air.
Not just the building on the corner. The building across the street, too. Bump and Terrible weren’t fucking around. She hadn’t expected them to.
And apparently neither did Slobag’s men. Or Bump’s, because plenty of both filled the street, fighting, gargantuan and mad in the bright, changing orange firelight.
Where was Terrible? Was he in there? She checked her phone: any message yet?
No.
Suspicion lurked in Lex’s eyes, in the set of his shoulders, when he parked the car and turned to her. “Why Bump got he people here?”
She shrugged, didn’t reply as they got out of the car.
“Tulip?”
Fuck. “Bump and Terrible both know we expected another murder here tonight. Maybe they sent some guys to look for Aros or something.”
It sounded so lame she half expected him to pull his gun on her. But what was she supposed to do, admit she knew an attack was planned on that storeroom and hadn’t told him?
No. Yes, she owed Lex loyalty. But she owed Terrible more, so no matter how shitty it might make her feel …
Gunshots sent all three of them racing back behind Lex’s car to duck down and hide. “Some fucking fight, aye?”
“What do we do?” Beulah looked from one of them to the other. “Are you coming with us, Lex, or—?”
A wave of magic flew over the street, hard and fast as though driven by hurricane winds. Chess’s knees buckled beneath her; she braced herself on Lex’s trunk to keep from falling. Shit, that was so strong, so dark … so fucking powerful.
“Chess? Are you okay?”
The first effects of the wave passed but the magic remained, beating at her, thickening the air. Where was Terrible, was he feeling that? Her entire body went icy cold. If he was in that crowd, if he was fighting, and energy like that hit him … if he fell in the middle of that crowd, he’d be dead. He’d be killed, and the one who did it would be a hero on this side of town.
She swallowed. Swallowed again; too much saliva in her mouth, in spite of the amount of speed she’d done. She was going to be sick, that was the problem. Just thinking about Terrible on the ground, about guns pointing at his head or knives driven into his throat, made her want to be sick. Another swallow, a drink of water, but the energy around her made her feel even worse.
“They’re starting,” she managed to say in reply. “They’ve started, I can feel it. The ritual. The sacrifice.”
Lex looked around. “Who they sacrificing? You got the knowledge?”
She shook her head. “Could be anybody. They could have grabbed somebody from the streets like they did before. Who knows.”
About a block up, at the corner across from the burning warehouse, a parking garage rose from the broken street. Chess bet that was where they were, where they’d do their ritual. Maybe at the top of it? Maybe in the street, yeah, but they might want to be up high if they could; it would be more dramatic, and she had a feeling Monica was into that sort of thing. Anybody who dressed that badly had to be.
She pointed to the garage. “They’re in there.”
Her discomfort grew with every step. Which made sense, seeing as how every step took her closer to playing no-you-don’t with a pair of homicidal crazies. Every step took her closer to the ritual they were performing, the knowledge that they’d stolen so much power from the earth that beating them would be almost impossible.
Every step carried her closer to the outskirts of the fighting crowd, too. She scanned the heads bobbing and ducking. Terrible’s wasn’t among them. She didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse.
They crept along, hugging the crumbling wall of the apartment building opposite the garage despite the very real possibility it could blow up any second.
Shadows moved in the garage. Shadows? Right. Shadows she could see because candlelight flickered softly behind them. Aros and Monica. Possibly Wen Li. And their sacrifice, of course.
“Lex. Are you coming with me?”
He looked at the fight, then at Chess. “Come along on the start, leastaways, aye.”
“Beulah?”
“Yes.”
She hadn’t expected that. From either of them, but especially not from Beulah; what possible reason would she have to risk her life?
Aside from the fact that if somebody didn’t do it, Monica would end up so powerful she could destroy the world.
They trotted across the street onto the bottom level of the parking garage. Rusted trash cans, soggy boxes, rotted wood lined the walls of it, littered the floor, barely visible in the streaks of light from the flames across the street. Heat from them made her already sweaty skin even slicker.
One last look at her phone as they started up the wide ramp to the next level. Nothing. Where was Terrible, shit, where was he? Panic climbed up her spine from her stomach into her chest, making her eyes sting. Fuck, all that magic in the air, all those men fighting, anything could have happened to him …
She clamped down on the thought, on the horrifying images of his fallen body—the memories of it—and locked them away. He was fine. He was fine, he was just busy, and she had to make herself believe that because if she didn’t she’d be ready to curl into a ball and wait until someone came along and killed her, too.
Beulah and Lex checked their own phones. Lex glanced at his sister. “Father called us up, I give he the ring-back, me.” Beulah nodded. Chess wanted to protest, but she wasn’t really in a position to do so, was she?
Outside, the fight got closer; bodies pressed against the low wall of the parking garage, barely visible to her as they neared the second level. Soon they’d be over it, in the garage itself. Shit. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with, between Monica and Aros and Wen, and who knew how they were armed, or how long L
ex would stay.
The ringing phone, just audible over the roar of the flames and the fight, cut through her thoughts. She spun around. Damn it, whose phone was—
Oh. Oh, shit.
Lex and Beulah stood, staring up toward the next level, and the next. Staring into the higher levels of the parking garage, where the phone had started ringing the second Lex had called Slobag; the phone that rang in unison with the sound coming from the earpiece of Lex’s phone.
Slobag was in that building, with Monica and Aros, with Wen Li.
“Do you think he’s known about this?” Chess broke the silence, hating to ask, but she had to. “I mean, do you think he’s in on it, that he’s here to watch?”
To their credit, neither Lex nor Beulah seemed shocked or offended by the question. “Ain’t thinking he is, nay. Ain’t really him kinda action, if you dig.”
None of them wanted to state the obvious: if Slobag wasn’t up there as part of the plot, chances were good he was the sacrifice. And unless they could stop that ritual fast, he was about to die a very unpleasant death.
Another explosion ripped through the air, another building turning into a shower of cement chunks and sparks. Holy fuck, what the hell were Bump and Terrible doing, destroying the entire block?
Shit, this was not a good position to be in. They had the low ground, their heads would be visible before they had a chance to do anything, and they had less space and less to hide behind than Aros, Monica, and Wen.
But it was their only option.
The light got brighter as more candles were lit. With every one the magic pressed heavier and heavier on her.
She put her hand on the railing and saw it was shaking. Her whole body shook, in fact, struggling against the magic in the air and the anxiety in her stomach. She wanted to be sick. She wanted to run. This didn’t feel right, it felt like something awful was about to happen, something awful was happening, and with every step she took, the urge to hide grew stronger.
She gritted her teeth and kept going.
Aros’s voice again, harsh in the damp magic-thick air. Calling the energy. Starting the ritual.
Chess took a deep breath, heard the others do the same. Lex raised his gun. Her muscles tightened. Behind her Beulah pulled a long, sharp stiletto from somewhere; a different knife from the one she’d had in Aros’s apartment.
They ran the last few steps.
Halfway up she saw them: Wen and Monica. She’d barely registered them in her mind when gunshots echoed off the cement, deafening her so the next few seconds took place in ringing silence.
Monica stood just outside the glowing dark-purple circle Aros had created. Her mouth opened in a scream Chess couldn’t hear and she jumped to the side, toward one of the thick cement pillars holding up the next level.
Her leap almost knocked Wen over. Wen, in whose hand a gun caught the light. Wen, on whose white sleeve a spot of blood had begun spreading. One bullet, at least, had hit.
Slobag and Aros were nowhere to be seen; inside the circle, she assumed, and started running for it before she finished the thought.
The closer she got the more it felt like running through soup, cold thick soup that clung to her skin and clogged her lungs. She kept going, pushing herself. It was only ten yards or so, not far at all, but it felt like miles, like the longest distance she’d ever run in her life.
And the fear. The energy that had filled her the night Jia died, that energy without shape or purpose but that found what was inside her and attached to it, became it, found the terror in her heart and created more, found everything else in her head and magnified it to an unbearable level.
Her heartbeat, and the voices. Not real ones. The memory voices. All of them crowded in on her; cruel voices, deceptively cheerful voices, voices cajoling and threatening and yelling. The sound of slamming doors and whimpers, the sound of belts and hands smacking flesh, the taste of hateful strangers in her mouth, the feel of their hands all over her, their laughter and pleasure somehow even more violent than their bodies.
She was nine, and a party was being held, and it was the kind of party where she was the star attraction. They had them once a month, and she counted the days until the next one with growing terror.
She was seven, and her foster brother liked pushing her into things, picking her up and dropping her on purpose. He’d laugh when she cried, kick her if she didn’t. Sometimes his mother would take pity on her and give her a pill to take, but usually she didn’t, and every day she was afraid to go home from school, afraid he’d be waiting along the way, afraid he’d be waiting just inside the door.
She was eleven, and they locked her in the closet when they weren’t home so she wouldn’t eat their food or touch their things, and sometimes they’d be gone all day and into the night, and she’d be trapped in the dark alone. There were bugs in the closet, rats in the closet, no toilet in the closet, and every time they left she wondered how badly they’d punish her if she made a mess or if that would be the time they didn’t come back and she’d die in there.
Other sounds snapped into place, gave her merciful rest from the memories, even if only for a few seconds. More gunshots, more screams, a woman’s screams. Monica or Beulah? She didn’t know, couldn’t look. Men’s voices, steel against cement.
Fear stiffened her muscles. Her body didn’t want to move, didn’t want to go farther. Her head didn’t want to either. All those images, those feelings, all waiting inside that circle, and the second she broke it they would spill out all over her, drown her in slime, and she’d die the way she should have then.
But scariest of all was the thought of what would happen to the world, to the Church, to Terrible, if Monica and Aros weren’t stopped, if they kept going and gathering power, taking it from the earth. Sooner or later the City would fail to hold; sooner or later, with the energy balance so skewed, the veil between the worlds might tear again as it had during Haunted Week, and the world would be invaded by the dead once more.
That’s what kept her moving, fighting through all of it: thinking of them, all those people, Elder Griffin, Lex and Beulah, and especially Terrible.
She hit the purple wall of the circle hard. Her already speeding heart cranked up so fast she thought it would explode. Purple like the Binding she’d been placed under before, the spell that wanted to control her, that forced her to bend to its will.
This circle didn’t. This circle didn’t care if she obeyed or what she said. It was furious and it hated, and it was made of energy so twisted and insane she thought it might drive her crazy too. It burrowed into her head, blinded her, fed off her, hooked cold cruel claws into her brain and heart and soul and yanked.
But it didn’t break. How the fuck did it not break, it was a circle, it was energy, she’d stepped through it and that should have broken it, holy shit, this was bad, this was really bad. This was unimaginable power, power that made her shiver.
Through the haze of vicious light she saw them, black figures against the glow: Slobag tied to the cement pillar, Aros before him with the knife raised. Shit, she was almost too late, just in time—
She lunged for Aros, her arms outstretched. Her vision blurred and spun, terror made her clumsy, but she hit him. Didn’t knock him down, but hit him.
He punched her. More lights exploded behind her eyes; hot hollow-feeling pain in her nose and cheeks. She stumbled back, barely managed to keep hold of his robe. Tried to push him again, overwhelmed by the smell of the fabric, dust and slime, rotten old blood and darkness, the penny-biting scent of insanity cloying and musty beneath it all.
Candles lined the circle, and his robe brushed the floor. Maybe if she could push him into the candles it would catch fire. Hell, maybe if she could push him out of the circle it would break. Maybe he could break it.
He pulled his arm back. Against the field of bright purple she saw the knife, the long wicked blade deflecting the light as it rose, hitting her eyes with neon shine as it started to descend. Fuck!
> She dove for his legs, trying to knock him off balance. More pain, sharp in her side like her skin was screaming. He’d slashed her. Hot blood began soaking into her shirt.
More screams outside. Another gunshot. Who was shooting, what was going on? Why hadn’t anyone come to help her, could they not get through the circle, were they busy? Were they dead? Fuck, what was happening?
Aros’s voice cut through her thoughts, cut through her mind like a blade of ice, words of power clouding it further. Agony tore down her spine, throbbed in her head. She fell to the cement, fell on her cut and bleeding side and hardly noticed.
More blood fell on her, spattered hot and thick on her crouched back, in her hair. She knew it was blood, smelled it, felt it, and her heart stopped in her chest as she looked up.
He’d stabbed Slobag.
Slobag writhed against the ropes holding him fast, his jaw working against the gag tied behind his head. She had a split second to look at the wound, to decide it probably wasn’t fatal, that in his haste Aros had missed, when she saw him draw back to try again.
Her hand shot out, punching him in the kneecap as hard as she could. It shifted with a satisfying pop. His scream sounded even better.
He tumbled to the ground, landed on his knee and screamed again. Good. Blood dripped from her hair into her eyes, fuck she could hardly see, and Aros lifted the knife once more.
She rose onto her own knees, caught his hand in both of hers. Fuck. No way was she strong enough to beat him at this. She might have the strength of the desperate, the strength of one trying to save her life—trying to save many lives—but he had the preternatural strength of the insane, and he would win.
She raised her knee and slammed it into his balls as hard as she could. Not very hard, unfortunately; she didn’t have a lot of room to move. But enough to make him double over, enough to make him drop the knife.
Chess grabbed it, jumped up. Stab him? If she killed him the spell would activate; it needed a death. If he got up too quickly, he could attack her again.