The guy looked up. “Hey! What—”
Chess watched him fall. Watched Terrible pull bungee cords out of his pack and hog-tie the guard, stuff a bit of dirty rag into his mouth. “Oughta hold he a bit,” he said, shoving the guard farther away from the lip of the tunnel, back into the shadows. Back where the guy probably wouldn’t accidentally roll off and drown.
“Are there any more?”
He glanced behind him. “Bettin so. Ain’t can see em, but gots us a little boat here, get us onto the Agneta, guessing, so … were I handlin it, be more men waitin there.”
She slid her hand across his back as she stood beside him, looking down a few feet at the surface of the water, the sunlight glinting off it so bright it felt like an attack. The “little boat” he mentioned—a dinghy? A raft? Some sort of boatlet, anyway, something that looked like a toddler’s bath toy—bobbed below. “Yes, but they’re not as smart as you.”
He snorted.
“Hey, if they were smart they wouldn’t have come here—against you—in the first place, right?”
He shrugged. Casually, as if it didn’t matter, but color started on his neck just the same, so subtle she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching for it. Expecting it. “C’mon, let’s get us over there. Longer we stand here, better odds we get seen.”
She squinted up at the pale steel side of the Agneta Katina rising skyward and stumbled against the wall, digging in her bag for her sunglasses, ignoring the gun butt rubbing against her arm.
“So this is like a private entrance, huh, for Razor or Blake or whoever?” She glanced back at him. “And how do you always have your sunglasses ready?”
“Don’t carry as much shit as you.”
“Uh-huh.” Found them! She slipped them on, smiling. “I get there in the end, though.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Know you do, Chessiebomb.”
With the dark lenses shielding her eyes from the horrible screaming sun, she was able to get a better look at the ship before them, a line of other ships stretching to the left and the right. They were so still, looming over the end of the tunnel, glaring at her—at the world. They were so aggressive, as if any second they were going to start advancing onto land and slicing through it, flattening anything and everything that got in their way.
She’d never been on a boat before. Not ever.
She and Terrible stood right at the end of the docks, or, rather, right below them; she guessed the tunnel opened about five feet below the ground. Guessed, too, that when night fell it would be full of water, because she thought the tide usually came in around sunset, and the bay wasn’t far below the tunnel floor.
That water, dark and murky and smelling of waste. The unblinking cruelty of that sharp sky. And the ships, a long row of steel walls, silent towers rising dead gray against the blue.
They looked abandoned. Not a soul on any of them—not a living soul, at least. Every one of them stood butted up to the docks, as silent and cold as wrapped corpses against a Crematorium wall.
But what might be lurking inside … That she didn’t know. Wouldn’t know until she went inside, and the frown on Terrible’s face told her he’d had the same thought.
Terrible hunched his shoulders, touched her arm. “Figure be a private way in or aught like it. Guessin we find out.”
“Yeah.” One last glance at the boats, menacing her from a sort-of-safe distance, and she shouldered her bag more securely. “Okay, let’s go.”
They managed to get into the dinghy-thing without too much trouble, except for the splinter digging into her palm from gripping the bare wooden slats that functioned as seats. The boat moved beneath them, shifting when they shifted; it dipped down low when Terrible climbed in, and terror raced up her spine. The water beneath them … so dark and murky, stinking of dead fish and slime and sea monsters or whatever the fuck was down there. She eyed it with distaste.
“Witches ain’t like the water, neither? Or just you?”
“I don’t like it,” she said, wishing she had a better excuse. “I mean, I’ve never been on it before. But I don’t think I like it.”
“Aye. Neither me.” But he picked up the lone oar from the bottom and used it well enough.
At least from what she saw. She closed her eyes after they started moving. Watching the dock recede, even just a few feet—it was horrible, and the water was horrible and boats were horrible, and she’d rather be doing anything, anything, other than sitting in that dinky block of wood being tossed around like a speck of dust in the breeze.
“You right, there, baby?”
“I’m fine,” she said, without opening her eyes. Yeah, it sucked looking like a pussy, but she didn’t think she could open them. Hard enough feeling as if her insides were tumbling over each other—in a bad way—when she couldn’t see. She had some vague suspicion that if she actually saw the horizon jumping around like an old movie, she’d be sick.
“Almost there, dig.”
“Great. Then what?”
“Guessin be a door, a ramp or ladder or whatany like that. Them gotta get on someways, aye?”
The boat veered beneath her; she heard him doing something but didn’t know what, and she dared to open one eye. Sure enough, the steel wall of the Agneta had a hole in it, a small door—what looked like a door—cut into the side. A short rope ladder hung from it, and Terrible was tying the boat to it. “Get you up first, aye? Rather me, only wanna— You know.”
She swallowed. Hard. He wanted to be there to catch her if she fell, didn’t want to knock her into the water if he did. Man, she wished she were doing something else. “Yeah, okay.”
The docks themselves were empty. Not a single person stood on them. Not a single person on dry land saw them sitting in the little boat—at least, if there were people, she didn’t see them. No one moved. A ghost town. Chess focused her gaze on the tower at the edge of the dock, a sort of radio or control tower or something, a steel spire poking the sky. It wasn’t very tall, maybe twenty, twenty-five feet or so, but it was a steady point to look at while Terrible finished his knot and helped her stand up.
Climbing from the rocking boat onto the first damp, dirty rope rung was bad. Climbing up the ladder itself, her knuckles scraping the side of the boat while it tried to twist beneath her, was worse. Her hands and feet were numb from fear, although the ladder was only four or five rungs; hardly a ladder at all.
It was tied to some sort of thick bolt or post set in the floor, several feet back from the doorway. The rest of the room was clear. No one stood there, no one watched or waited.
Her feelings came back the second she dragged herself onto the steel floor. A shame, that, because what she felt wasn’t good. Not at all. Dark magic, death magic, washing over her in a wave of sorrow and filth, nearly making her already unhappy stomach crawl out of her throat.
She gasped and tried to swallow it, without much success. Or, with success—she wasn’t sick everywhere—but she didn’t think that was going to last.
Terrible slipped over the edge to stand beside her. “Feelin off, aye?”
“You feel it, too?”
“Feel somethin. Ain’t so bad, though.” He colored a little. “Ain’t like what it were, thinkin. Like maybe be worse afore.”
“Before the sigil.”
He nodded.
Footsteps came toward them, down the hallway to the right. They stood in a plain room with bare dingy walls and scuffed flooring. Chess imagined this was some sort of loading area; it didn’t look like the sort of place the boat’s millionaire owner would visit.
Terrible threw himself against the wall, pushing her to the side so he stood between her and the door. His knife shone in his left hand, down low against his thigh, ready to be lifted and used when the door opened.
Which it did. Terrible lunged, his right arm wrapping around their visitor’s throat, the knife held just below it so the sharp tip could be felt.
“Where’s Razor?” He jerked hi
s arm back, tightening his grip on the man’s throat before loosening it again. “Where?”
“I don’t—don’t know—”
A driblet of blood sprang up under the knife’s point. “Ain’t bother me iffen I kill you now, go find he myself.”
The man gasped; when he looked at Chess, she forced herself to keep her face impassive. “I—think he’s in the captain’s room. Think he is.”
“How we get there?”
“Be all guarded, you ain’t getting in, just to say—”
The blood ran faster down the man’s throat as Terrible widened the cut. “How we get there?”
“Two—two doorways down this hall, up three floors. First—first door on the left, you—”
He tumbled to the floor, out cold from Terrible’s fist to the top of his head. Chess didn’t need Terrible to tell her to keep a lookout for more while he tied the man up as he had the one in the tunnel, and shoved him into the corner.
Together they moved down the hall, the power in the air growing stronger with every step, until they reached the first doorway. It opened onto a staircase, its sick energy breathing at her like bellows of evil.
Terrible paled a bit but shook his head when she opened her mouth. “Feelin it, aye, but not so bad.”
Something had to be close. The open stairway led both down and up carpeted steps, and foulness filled the air. Nothing to obstruct whatever magic was happening near the stairs, then, on whichever floor it happened to be. They’d have to look for it—if they couldn’t get Razor to talk.
For the first time the idea came to her that this could be it, that the sorcerer could be on the ship and they could catch him and end the whole fucking mess. She didn’t have a lot of hope that would be the case, no, but it was possible. And she could really use some kind of positive thought at the moment.
The second doorway—the second staircase—felt as bad as the first. And was just as empty. Terrible leaned close to mutter, “Ain’t got the right feel to me. Oughta be more here, dig, more men.”
“What do you think is going on?”
He glanced at her, nodded toward her bag. “Thinkin they on the wait, dig. Get ready.”
He was right. Her shaking hands found the gun, had just pulled it from her bag when she and Terrible hit the top of the stairs.
And found an army of magic-controlled zombies waiting for them.
The zombies didn’t make a sound. They moved en masse, their silence adding to the horror of it. Terrible started shooting; she started shooting, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference, that they wouldn’t feel it. Realizing, too, as she squeezed the trigger, that she was shooting at innocent people.
A couple of them fell. Blood splattered everywhere, on the walls, on the low ceiling, on the steel floor. None of the bespelled victims noticed it. None of them looked, none of them reacted, and tears in her eyes blurred their faces as she looked at them. They were just people, people who’d made a mistake, people who’d gone chasing a high and found magic and death instead.
Terrible pushed into the crowd of them; they clutched at him with bloody hands, swung at him with slick weapons, pipes and bats and wrenches. She kept squeezing the trigger, knowing the gun was empty, not knowing what else to do, until Terrible reached back to grab her hand and started dragging her along behind him.
Ow! Fuck, they were— A blow glanced off her shoulder, off her leg. Searing pain in her arm; a blade, someone was slashing at her, and blood ran down her hand to the floor. Shit, that wasn’t good. Magic in her blood, magic connected to her, and no time to clean it up. No time to even think about it, because stopping to think about it would probably mean dying.
She stumbled and almost fell, only Terrible’s grip keeping her semi-upright. The magic around them, the thick choking miasma of it, clogged her lungs, clouded her brain. Thank fuck he was standing, the sigil was working, he was still moving.
Moving well enough to run, in fact. He ran down the hall, his footsteps pounding on the carpeted floor, and she ran with him, trying without success to hold her arm tight enough to stop the bleeding.
The horde followed. Not running as fast, no, but following behind, close enough that fingers touched her back once or twice.
They reached the next staircase. Terrible yanked her into it, pushing the door behind him. It didn’t close all the way, of course—they were being chased too closely for that—but she appreciated his attempt. As much as she could appreciate anything, at least, because her stomach churned and her breath came in awful harsh gasps, burning her lungs. She fought to keep going up the stairs, up one flight, then two, and when they reached the top of each more of the bespelled appeared, more followed them, reaching for them with hands controlled by someone else. Fuck, how many of them were there?
Stupid fucking question. Half of Downside was there—or maybe not that many, but there was a reason the streets were so empty.
They’d reached the top of the third staircase. She thought it was the third, assumed it was, because Terrible spun around into the hall and ran to the right, back toward the end of the boat. Back toward the way they came, since they’d gone one stairway too far; back toward—she guessed—the captain’s room where Razor was supposed to be.
She was right. The hall outside an open door was stuffed with people, silent blank-faced people standing perfectly still. Waiting for them.
Terrible stopped short, his hand on her wrist. “Got any magic you can do?”
“No, I— Wait.” Blood dripped from her arm and trailed behind her. The bare feet of the bespelled were touching that blood, stepping in it. Iron filings and iron-ring water had weakened the spell before, right? Not enough, but a little?
And the key, the one Edsel had given her. The key connected somehow to whatever magic was being done.
She had to separate those bodies from that magic. Had to break the magical connection controlling their souls, the magic-bound ectoplasm, the— Her glance fell on Terrible’s arm. Terrible’s sigil.
An overload of magic interrupted the energy of the sigil holding his soul in place. Only for a second, yes, and not permanently, but long enough to make him—to make his soul escape.
So maybe, if she could somehow send a jolt of extra magic through the bodies, she could disconnect them from the magic holding them?
It probably wouldn’t last, just as Terrible’s soul always came back because of the sigil. But it might confuse the zombies. It might give her and Terrible the few seconds they needed to get away.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I do.”
Or maybe she didn’t. She probably didn’t. But what the hell. She could at least make the attempt, right?
Footsteps on the stairs behind them; they’d managed to put some space between themselves and their attackers, but not much. Not enough.
Or so she thought, until Terrible kicked open a door to her right and pushed her through it, slammed it behind them.
She didn’t need him to tell her they didn’t have much time. She was already digging in her bag, yanking out everything and anything she could think of. The key, tingling in her palm. Some powdered crow’s bone, some sapodilla seeds, some goat’s blood—that could work, mixed with her blood.
She needed more than that. She didn’t have more. It would have to do.
She set her firedish on the floor, moving as quickly as her shaking hands would allow. The door started vibrating: fists of the bespelled beating it, shaking it in its frame. Shit, shitshitshit, hurryhurryhurry …
The herbs went in the firedish. She touched her lighter to them, blew on them gently to make them catch faster, and pulled out her knife. “Power to power, these powers bind.”
The door shook harder. Terrible braced his back against it. They were in some kind of storage room, some kind of closet; she had the vague impression of brooms and mops and shit like that, the smell of ammonia and bleach stinging her nose.
Stinging her nose and mixing with the sharp fragrance of the herbs in the firedish. O
kay. She set the point of her knife against her left pinkie and sliced. Not enough blood from that; she knew there wouldn’t be. She braced herself and set the point of her knife against the wound in her arm and dragged it, widening the cut so blood flowed faster, ignoring the stinging pain. Her blood fell on the burning herbs as she waved her arm over them, droplets sizzling and smoking, billows of smoke rising to make her eyes burn even more than they already did from the pain.
She moved her arm to the side so it dripped on the floor. Shit, she hoped this worked, because if it didn’t—
The door cracked in the top corner, big sharp splinters falling to the floor. She looked up at Terrible.
Their eyes met. In them she saw that same confidence she always saw, his confidence in her. Biggest mistake he’d ever made, wasn’t it, trusting her? When she had no idea what she was doing—no idea in their relationship, and no idea at that moment, pulling some vague theory for a spell out of her ass and gambling on it saving their lives.
Fuck, please let this work.… Please let her know what to do.
The smoke thickened. Her blood covered the floor. She dumped the vial of goat’s blood into the puddle, emptied her little packets of herbs, grabbed the key. Time to go.
She looked up at Terrible again, holding out her hand for him to take. Really looked at him, knowing it was a second they couldn’t spare but needing it. Needing to say something to him one more time, even if she couldn’t say it out loud. Needing to see him do the same thing, needing and getting that second or two when everything stopped around them and his skin was warm against hers, when the strength of his fingers was like strength in her soul and just touching him, knowing he was there, made her feel so safe. Even then, even knowing she was very possibly about to die … he was there, and she was safe as long as he was.
Her lungs ached from the hot smoky air she sucked into them, one last deep breath, and she nodded.
Terrible opened the door.
He stepped back, yanking her to her feet and to the side as the crowd pushed into the room. The movement sent fresh pain shooting up her arm, sent droplets of blood flying off her arm. Good. The more of it she could get to touch them, the more she could spread around, the better.