City Of Ghosts (Downside 3) By Stacia Kane: An Excerpt And A Snippet

Now, I'm obsess with everything Downside.  Last night, I mean, Early this morning like 1:30am,  I googled Ms Kane and browsed through her website/blog.  And look what I found! An excerpt and a snippet! Yipee!

“Not all of your duties will be pleasant. But that is the sacrifice you make, for as a Church employee you must always remember that you are privileged above all others.”
–The Example is You, the guidebook for Church employees

Chapter One

The guillotine waited for them, its blackened wood dark and threatening against the naked cement walls of the Execution Room.

Chess limped past it, trying not to look. Trying not to remember that she deserved to kneel before it, to place her neck on the age-smoothed rest and wait for the blade to fall. She’d killed a psychopomp. Hell, she’d killed people.

Only the death of the hawk meant automatic execution.

But nobody knew about that. At least, nobody with the authority to order her death knew about that. She was safe for the moment.

Too bad she didn’t feel safe. Didn’t feel the way she should have felt. The dull ache in her thigh with every step she took in her low-heeled Church pumps reminded her of the almost-healed gunshot wound; her limp reminded everyone else, drew attention to her at a time when she wanted it even less than usual.

Elder Griffin’s hand was warm at her elbow. “You may sit while the sentence is read and carried out, Cesaria.”

“Oh, no, really, I’m—”

He shook his head, his eyes serious. What was that about? Granted, an execution wasn’t exactly a party-it-up event; very few Church events were. But Elder Griffin looked even more solemn than usual, more troubled.
He didn’t know, did he? Had Oliver Fletcher told him about the psychopomp, about what she’d done? If that bast—no. No, she was being stupid and paranoid. Oliver wouldn’t have told him. When would he have? As far as she knew the two men had only shared one conversation since that night, the night she’d killed the psychopomp, the night Terrible had been—

Her breath rasped in her chest. Right. This wasn’t the time, or the place. This was an execution, and she had testimony to give, and she needed to calm the fuck down and give it.

So she sat on the hard, straight-backed wooden chair, breathing the disinfectant stink heavy in the room, and watched the others file in after her. Elder Murray, the rings painted around his eyes as black as his hair, almost disappearing against the rich darkness of his skin. Dana Wright, the other Debunker who’d been at the bust at Madame Lupita’s, her light hair curling around her face.

For Lupita herself, no one came. Anyone who might have cared about her, who might have wanted to be there for her in the last moments of her physical life, had either already been executed themselves or were locked in their cells in the prison building.

Last—last before the condemned woman herself—came the executioner, his face obscured by a heavy black hood. On his open right palm rested a dog’s skull; his psychopomp, ready to take Madame Lupita down to the spirit prisons. Clenched in his left fist was a chain, and at the end of that chain was Madame Lupita, her legs and wrists shackled together with iron bands.

The door thunked shut behind them, the lock popped; it would not open for half an hour. Time enough for the execution to take place and the spirit to be taken to the City of Eternity. The timelocks had been instituted in the early days of the Church, when a series of mishaps had led to a ghost opening the door and escaping. Like everything the Church did, the timelocks made sense, but Chess couldn’t help the tiny thrill of panic that ran up her spine. Trapped. Something she never wanted to be.

The executioner fastened the chain-end he held to the guillotine, and began setting up the skull at the base of the permanent altar in the corner. Smoke poured from his censer and overpowered the scent of bleach and ammonia; the thick, acrid odor of melidia to send Lupita’s soul to the spirit prisons, ajenjible and asafetida, burning yew chips to sting Chess’s nose. The energy in the room changed, power slithering up her legs and lifting the hair on the back of her neck, that little rush that always made her want to smile.

She didn’t, though. Not today. Instead she pressed her teeth together and looked at the condemned woman.
Lupita had changed since Chess saw her last, in that miserable, hot little basement that stunk of terror and burned herbs and poison. Her big body seemed to have shrunk. Instead of the ridiculous silver turban Chess remembered, Lupita wore only her own close-shorn hair; instead of the silly sideshow caftan her bulk was hidden beneath the plain black robe of those sentenced to die.

But her eyes had not changed. They searched the little crowd, found Chess, and glared, hatred burning from their depths so hard Chess almost felt it sear her skin.

She forced herself not to look away. That woman had almost killed her, slipping poison into her drink; had almost killed a roomful of innocent people, summoning a rampaging, violent ghost. Fuck her. She was going to die, and Chess was going to watch.

Something slithered behind Lupita’s eyes.

Chess’ breath froze in her chest. Had she seen that? That flash of silver? That flash, which meant Lupita was Hosting a spirit in her body?

Her eyes widened; she stared at Lupita now, focusing. Waiting. It shouldn’t be possible. Lupita hadn’t been Hosting when she was arrested—they would have caught that immediately when she was brought in—and there was no way in hell she would have been able to pick up and bond with a spirit in the Church prisons. It simply wasn’t possible.

The flash didn’t reappear. No. She was imagining things. All the stress, the tension of her personal life—what there was of it—and the overbearing sympathy of the Elders and the other Debunkers, crushing her beneath their concern for her leg and their good intentions. Add to that a few extra Cepts and a Panda, and half a Nip to keep her awake… No wonder she was seeing things. What was next, pink elephants?

Elder Griffin stood before the guillotine, cleared his throat.

“Irene Lowe, also known as Madame Lupita, thou has been found guilty by the Church of the crime of summoning spirits to earth. Further, thou has been found guilty of the attempted murder of Church Debunker Cesaria Putnam. Cesaria, is this woman responsible for those crimes?”

Chess stood up, despite the protests of her right thigh and Elder Griffin’s slight frown. “Yes, Elder.”

“Thou testifies this based on what?”

“I saw this woman commit those crimes, Elder.”

“And thou swears thy word to be Fact, and Truth?”

“Yes, Elder. I do.”

Elder Griffin gave her a curt nod, turned next to Dana Wright while Chess sank back onto her chair. A woman was about to die, based on her word. When her word—the word of a junkie and a liar, the word of someone who’d betrayed her only real friend in the world—wasn’t worth shit.

He was never going to speak to her again. She’d given up calling the week before. She’d given up hoping she might see him out at Trickster’s or Chuck’s, given up hanging around the Market in the cold waiting to see if he turned up. He was still out there, of course. People had seen him.

People who weren’t her. She’d never known anyone could avoid another person so thoroughly. It was like he could sense her coming.

Shifting movement in the standing crowd drew her attention back to the proceedings; the execution itself was about to happen.

The room thrummed with power now, beating like a heart around them, steady and slow and thick. No need for a circle; the room itself was a circle, an impregnable fortress with iron sandwiched into the cement walls.

Elder Griffin started pounding the drum, letting his hand stay in the air for so long between hits Chess felt herself waiting, breathless, unable to move or allow her lungs to fill until the next heavy thump. The room’s magic slid into her, finding those empty spaces and filling them, making her something more than she was. It felt good. So good she wanted to close her eyes and give herself to it completely, to forget everything and everyone and do nothing but exist in the energy.

She couldn’t, of course. She knew she couldn’t. So instead she watched as the executioner’s psychopomp formed, the dog growing out of the skull, flowing like a river from a mountain peak to become legs, a tail, hair sprouting glossy and black over the bare skin and bones.

The drum beat faster. Drums…there had been drums at Lupita’s séance, that night, played by a duo of speedfreaks with eyes like ball bearings. Now the drums again, keeping monotonous dragging time under Elder Murray’s voice.

“Irene Lowe, thou are found guilty and sentenced to die by a tribunal of Church Elders, and this sentence shall now be carried out. If thou has any last words to speak, speak them now.”

Lupita shook her head, staring at the floor. Chess reached out a little with her own power, trying to get some sense of something from the woman. Some fear, some anger. Anything. Lupita was too quiet. Too calm. This didn’t feel right.

The executioner helped Lupita to her knees, placed her neck on the divot. The drum beat harder, louder even than Chess’s blood in her veins or the thick sweet magic air rasping in her lungs. Louder than her own thoughts.
She reached out further, letting her power caress Lupita’s skin, trying to find something—

Oh fuck!

Her leg gave when she threw herself to her feet, almost falling over. “No! No, don’t—”

Too late. The blade fell, its metallic shnik slicing the air as cleanly as Irene’s neck, thudding into place like the slamming of a prison door.

Irene’s head tumbled into the basket. Blood erupted from the stump of her neck, poured over her head, over the dull cement floor.

Her spirit rose; her spirit, the spirit that had been Madame Lupita. The dog lunged for it, ready to drag it below the earth, into the prisons outside the City of Eternity.

The other spirit rose as well. The spirit Lupita’d been Hosting. The one there was no psychopomp to take care of, no graveyard dust to subdue. The one an entire roomful of Church employees were helpless against in that room with its iron walls and locked door.

Chess’ scream finally escaped, bursting into the air. It was drowned out by the others, the shouts of surprise and fear.

Elder Griffin dropped the drum. The dog grabbed Lupita’s spirit—she had a passport on her arm, she was the one he’d been summoned to retrieve—and dove into the patch of wavering air behind the wall. The last thing Chess saw of Lupita was her mouth stretched into a horrible grin as she left them all to die.

The ghost hovered in the air before the guillotine. A man, his hair slicked back from his forehead, his eyes blank, his face twisted with savage joy. Elder Murray shouted something, she couldn’t be sure what; her skin tingled and itched and threatened to crawl away from her body entirely. A powerful ghost, too powerful. What the fuck was he, how the fuck had she—

“I command you to be still!” Elder Griffin’s voice rang out, echoed off the walls, speared through Chess’ body. “By my power I command it!”

It wouldn’t work. She knew without even looking that it wouldn’t. But the executioner…did he have another skull? Some graveyard dirt?

Dana screamed. Chess glanced over and saw the ghost fighting with Elder Murray, its mouth open in a ghastly smile, its eyes narrow with effort. The ghost held the ritual blade in its hand, the one the executioner had used to summon his psychopomp.

No time to watch. No time to look at them, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway. The room was filled with noise and energy and heat, a confusing mishmash of images her brain couldn’t process. She focused on the smoking censor, the stang in the corner, the black bag beside it. The executioner dug through it frantically, pulling things out—

Someone fell into her; she tumbled to the hard floor with a thud.

More screams, more shouts. Something clattered to the floor. The energy was unbearable. It wasn’t a rush anymore, wasn’t a high. It was an invasion, shoving her around, distorting her thoughts and her vision and infecting her with everyone else’s panic.

She had to calm down. Her hands refused to obey her; her tattoos prickled and burned, as they were designed to do. The ghost’s presence set them off, an early warning system she was usually grateful for but would gladly have done without at that moment. Chaos reigned in the execution room, and it carried her along on a wild riptide of blood.

Okay. Deep breath. Pause. She closed her eyes, dug down deep to the emptiness in her soul. The place where things like love and happiness and warmth should be; the place that was an almost-empty room for her, the place where only two people lived, and one of them hated her.

But it was enough. It was enough to have that moment of silence, to tune out the terror and noise around her and find her own strength.

She opened her eyes. Her limbs obeyed her. She sprang to her feet, ignoring the pain, and almost lost her hard-fought calm.

Elder Murray was dead. His body lay stretched across the floor, flat-out like a corpse ready for cremation; a gaping bloody wound leered at her from his throat.

Behind him the executioner slumped against the wall, his robe soaked with blood. She barely saw him through the ghost, blazing white, bloated with the energy he’d stolen. Chess groaned. A ghost with that much power was like an ex-con on Cloud-laced speed; unstoppable, without feelings, without logic. A killing machine who wouldn’t stop until he was forced to.

And they were locked in with it.

Oh shit, they were locked in with them. The iron walls kept the spirits of Elder Murray and the executioner locked in just as surely as the rest of them; Chess saw them out of the corner of her eye, faint shapes struggling to come into being.

There was a chance they wouldn’t be hungry, that they wouldn’t become murderous, but the odds were about as good as the odds that she’d be able to fall asleep that night without a handful of her pills. In other words, not fucking good at all. In a minute or so the ghosts would find their shapes, find their powers, and things would go from worse to totally fucking awful.

Blood spattered the walls, dripped off the shiny blade of the guillotine and ran in thick streams along the cement. It dripped from the ceiling where it had sprayed from Elder Murray’s neck; it formed a glistening pool around the body, outlined footprints in a dizzying pattern, and smeared around the broken remains of the dog’s skull. Fuck. No psychopomp. Did he have another?

Elder Griffin was covered with blood. Dana too, her eyes wide. But Chess wasn’t the only one who’d rallied. Dana’s eyes were dark and fierce with determination; Elder Griffin fairly glowed with power and strength.

Chess caught Dana’s eye, jerked her head toward the bag. Dana nodded and took a step forward.

“By my power I command you to be still,” she said, each word loud and clear. “I command you to go back to your place of silence.”

The ghost turned to look at her, and Dana edged back, drawing it away. Chess inched to the left, trying not to catch the ghost’s attention. She had to get to that bag. Had to get to the bag or they would all die. Maybe they’d die anyway, but she was damned if she wasn’t going to at least try to save them. Life might be a pool of shit but the City was worse—for her anyway—and she had no intention of going there. Not that day.

Her feet in their stiff shoes slipped in thick blood; the scent of it filled the air, a coppery tang beneath the herbs. How long would those burn, and was there more?

The ghost moved toward Dana, who kept talking, words of power flowing from her mouth. He clutched the knife in one semi-solid hand, blood dripping down the blade and covering his spectral skin. Viewed through him it looked black, like ink.

She glanced at the ghosts of Murray and the executioner again. They were almost fully formed now, slowly squirming into being like maggots erupting from a slab of rotting steak. She—they—didn’t have much time.
Dana screamed. The ghost jumped at her. Elder Griffin leapt to the side, joining the struggle, as the ghost attempted to slice Dana’s throat.

Chess dove for the bag. More herbs, first—she grabbed the little baggies, dumped them on the dying fire in the censor. The smoke thickened. Another psychopomp, please let him have a spare…she threw things from his bag, not watching where they landed, the hair on the back of her neck practically trying to pull itself out of her skin. She couldn’t hear much, what was happening? Were Dana and Elder Griffin dead? Oh, shit—

Her hand found something solid, and her body flooded with relief. Another skull. Thank the gods who didn’t exist, he had a spare. She yanked it out, tore at the inert silk wrapping it, barely glanced at it as she set it down.

A roar behind her; the ghost had spotted her. Dana and Elder Griffin tried to hold it but it made itself transparent and sprang at her, through the guillotine. She ducked out of the way. “I call on the escorts of the City of the Dead,” she managed, stumbling, trying to keep within reach of the skull but away from the ghost’s grabbing hand. “By my power I call you!”

The skull rattled. Chess pushed more power out, as much as she could, not an easy task when trying to keep from being turned into an energy snack for a rampaging dead man.

Another problem faced her as well. No passport. The spirit hadn’t been accounted for, didn’t have a marking on his body; there was a chance the dog wouldn’t know which spirit to grab, when it came. It had happened to Chess once before, a few months previously, and the dog had gone after her. She would never forget that feeling, the horrible sensation of her soul being pulled from her body like a banana from its peel…

Not to mention the additional spirits forming not five feet away, the executioner and Elder Murray.

“No passport,” she managed to say, and Dana’s eyes widened. She glanced at the knife in her hand, raised her eyebrows, and Chess nodded because she had no choice.

Dana tossed the knife. The ghost spun around when it clattered to the floor, leapt for it. Chess grabbed the executioner’s ectoplasmarker and popped the cap, held it ready in her fist, and shouted.

Just as she’d thought, the ghost wheeled back around and came after her with the knife. Dana and Elder Griffin moved, Chess didn’t see where. She was too busy watching the ghost, seeing his solid hand raise over her head, grabbing his wrist with her left hand and bringing the marker up with her right.

He didn’t have a passport; they hadn’t expected him, hadn’t designed one. Oh fucking well. The blade hovered above her eye, its point tacky with coagulating blood, while she scrawled a series of X’s on the spectral skin. The ghost’s face twisted with rage.

Now for the worst part. With every bit of strength she had left she pushed herself to the side, to the skull, and, dropping the marker, brought her right hand to the blade’s point.

She hadn’t expected it to hurt instantly but it did. Ow, it really fucking did, and her blood poured from the wound onto the skull, and she shoved all of that pain and all of her power into her next words.

“I offer the escorts an appeasement for their aid. Escorts come now! Take this man to the place of silence, by my power and by my blood I command it!”

The dog roared into being, huge and shaggy. Its jaws bared; this wasn’t just a dog it was a wolf, what the fuck was the executioner doing with an unauthorized psychopomp—

The ghost’s eyes widened. His mouth opened in a silent scream as he tried to jump away, all thoughts of killing forgotten. The dog—the wolf—went after him, its body moving low and fast like the predator it was.

The ghosts of the executioner and Elder Murray were fully formed now, huddled in the corner. Chess could practically see the last vestiges of sanity, of who they were in life, draining away, could see them trying to hold on.

It didn’t matter. The wolf howled. A hole ripped open in the thin veil between her world and the spirit one; the wolf snatched the original ghost in its massive jaw. Ectoplasm burst from the ghost’s body under the wolf’s teeth. The ghost screamed, an act somehow more horrible because of its silence.
The wolf turned, aimed at Elder Murray and the executioner. They huddled together, trying so hard; tears sprang to Chess’s eyes. She’d never known Elder Murray well, never dealt much with him, but his last act was to struggle to retain some humanity, and she couldn’t help the surge of affectionate sadness, of pride, that threatened to overwhelm her.

Dana and Elder Griffin were beside her, Dana squeezing her hand. The wolf leapt, still clutching their unwelcome visitor in its teeth, and caught Elder Murray and the executioner in a bizarre sort of bear hug; he carried them through the wavering hole and it snapped shut behind them, leaving the three still alive to stare open-mouthed at where it had been.

Here's the Chapter 9 Snippet:

Once inside the car he thrust the file into her hands and shot the car off the curb in a maelstrom of squealing rubber. She looked at him sharply, her back tensing in anticipation of an argument.

She’d fucked him over hardcore. She’d betrayed him and she’d lied to him, and she knew as far as he was concerned she’d led him on and used him as well, had consorted with people who wanted to see him dead and given them information to help them make him so. Most of all she’d hurt him. And if the pain in her chest was anything close to what he’d felt she was more than willing to admit he deserved to get his own back. Was willing to do more than admit it; was willing to take it, in the hopes he’d eventually decide she’d been punished enough and they could maybe move on.

But at that moment they were on their way to interview the man—Ratchet—who’d found the body parts in the vacant lot. She needed her wits about her, not to be waiting for the next verbal barb or dirty look. He could slash at her with knife-sharp words later; maybe if he did it enough her blood would finally flow clean.

Somehow she doubted it ever would.

But he didn’t speak at all. He’d flipped on his sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes, but the set of his heavy jaw and lowering brow, the tension in his arms and the way his lips pressed together…

“Are you okay? I mean,” she added quickly, “do you feel okay. That guy back there, I don’t know about you but he made me feel kind of twitchy. He had some power and I felt it. So I just wondered if maybe you did too.”

“Ain’t no witch.”

“Yeah, I know, but you look like— He was creepy and I just wondered if you’d felt it too, is all.”

When he didn’t respond, she tried again. “That sigil in your chest, have you been feeling—”

“I’m right.”

“I’d really want to help—”

“Said I’m right, dig?”

She bit her lip and turned to the file. Thanks to his sneaky thief act the night before she hadn’t even had a chance to look through it, only to skim it before trotting outside like a good little doggie to wait for Lauren.

And she hadn’t missed much. At least she hoped she hadn’t; but no, they wouldn’t have stolen anything. Copied it, sure, she had no doubt. But not stolen.

Sun glinted off the heavy chain around Terrible’s right wrist and stung her eyes, and for once she had her sunglasses. She was digging around for them when he pulled the car up in front of an empty-eyed building with dead weeds poking out of the ground floor windows, its walls dark with remembered flames. A squat.

She grabbed her notebook and pen, secured the edges of the file with a rubber band and stuffed it into the depths of her bag.

He didn’t ask if she was okay, but opened his trunk while she climbed out of the car and stood on the patch of crumbled cement that had once been a small parking lot. Ahead of her dried blood crusted the street; she could still see the tire tracks he’d left when he peeled away the night before.

The pig carcasses were gone, of course. And now that she thought about it—yes, the air carried the faint fragrance of roasting pork. She couldn’t imagine the glee that little bit of magic must have left in the hearts and stomachs of the neighborhood, most of whom had probably never seen that much meat in their lives. Didn’t want to imagine if any of those lives had been lost in the battle over who got to eat it, either. None of her concern.

She tried to shrug off the heavy stares she knew the two of them were getting and headed for the empty doorway when she heard the trunk slam shut.

The entire bottom floor was choked with weeds as high as her chest, long spiky stalks of ivory-colored grass gone to seed, spindly bushes. A thin trail had been worn through them into a darker space in the corner. The stairs. Terrible slid in front of her without touching her and pushed his way along the path; the dead plants tried in vain to grab his arms as he passed.

Soft sounds drifted down the stairs when they hit the bottom. Chess paused, took a deep breath. Something rang in the building; so faint it was more of an implication than an actual fact, but there nonetheless. Magic. The slow, deep slither of magic, inching up her legs and along her arms, curling into her stomach.

Not just average magic, either. Almost everyone did some; there was an entire successful industry in spellbooks and items designed for the average person who had little or no skill or natural ability. Most of them didn’t really work. They relied more on the practitioner’s belief that it would be effective than any actual results.

She was familiar enough with how those spells and charms felt. She’d encountered enough of them in the homes of her subjects; dream safes designed to ward away nightmares, or charm bags for wealth or safety, or occasionally sex spells planted in bedrooms. Those tended to be the most effective—and thus the most irritating for Chess, who did not like sex magic—simply because sex was the most accessible type of energy for most people. Any idiot could get turned on.

But this didn’t have the blunt edge of amateur magic, not at all. Too subtle; too well-hidden.

She didn’t realize she was staring at the landing above them until Terrible’s low voice broke her reverie. “Any wrong?”

“Feels like magic in here,” she said, echoing his quiet tone.

“Some do, aye? Them with them luck spells or aught.”

“Not like this, though. Spells like that—spells done by people who really aren’t talented—they don’t feel…finished, if you know what I mean. They’re not well-formed, they’re just like little blobs of weak energy. This isn’t—” She stopped, suddenly aware that they were having a conversation. A normal conversation.

One that wouldn’t last if she even considered pointing that out. Oops. “This isn’t like that. Whoever’s been casting in here knows what they’re doing. And they’ve tried to hide it. The magic, I mean. They’re trying to hide what they’re doing.”

“All Bump’s here, dig. Them to keep the eye out. Ain’t should be doin up that shit here.”

“All of them? They’re all Bump’s people?”

He shrugged. “What they ought, aye.”

“I guess we should go see, huh?”

Another small shrug, like he couldn’t really be bothered to complete the movement, and he preceded her up the cement staircase. The floor had once been covered in linoleum; curled edges of it remained like bookends where the stairs joined the walls.

The smell hit her nose at the same moment her feet hit the landing. Terrible stopped short; she would have run right into him if she hadn’t done the same. He turned to her, and in that moment she wasn’t thinking about what she’d done or what he’d done or what she wished they could do. She was thinking about the scent of death and how it raised the hairs on her arms, and she was thinking things had just gotten a fuck of a lot worse. For everyone.