The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane

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СКАЧАТЬ and chest, making her easily identifiable. Other people might get the tats, but not where they could be seen; to do so was like asking for a prison sentence and a date with a white-hot iron slab to remove them. She gave a mental shrug. None of her business. Enforcement of nonmoral law was a totally different department, government rather than religion.

      It was a very different room from the one where she’d been given her tattoos, in the ceremony that had officially made her a Debunker. That room was a pure, pale blue, bare save the table and the artist’s equipment, and her fellow initiates and the few older Debunkers attending had knelt, chanting, increasing the energy in the room until she’d felt ready to pass out and hadn’t noticed the pain of the needle anymore, or the power searing itself into her.

      “What say, Chess?” Terrible interrupted her reverie, glancing up from where he sat with his bare chest pressed against the slanted back of a chair. She hadn’t realized how many tattoos he had, aside from the almost-full sleeve on his left arm and the small script circling the base of his throat. His shoulders were covered, too, and something decorated his left side from underarm to waist and into his pants. If he hadn’t been so wide, dwarfing the chair, she wouldn’t have seen it.

      “I want to—” Her mouth snapped shut.

      “What?”

      “I … What are you having done?” She watched, fascinated and a little disgusted, as the tattoo artist peeled a long, thin strip of bloody flesh from Terrible’s back.

      “One more,” the artist said, and Terrible glanced back at him and nodded.

      “Terrible … what the fuck?”

      “Scar, Chess. You wait. Ain’t had the fun part yet.”

      “Um … there’s a fun part?”

      The artist came back with a scalpel, shining silver, and bent over. Terrible’s eyebrows twitched, but he stayed silent—they all stayed silent—while the artist cut and peeled off another strip. He blotted the blood with gauze.

      “So what happen? You right?”

      “Yeah … um …” The artist had a bowl of something now that looked like ashes. As Chess watched, he started rubbing handfuls of it over the wound he’d created—at least she assumed it was over the wound, she couldn’t see it. “Have you seen that kid Brain?”

      “Naw, can’t say so. Why?”

      “I want to find him. He came by my place this morning, said Hunchback kicked him out, but I—”

      “Fuck.” Anger poured over Terrible’s face like molasses. “That squidgepopper. I fuckin told him, ain’t the kid’s fault. We see him, too? I’d sure do with paying him a visit now.”

      “Ready, T?” The artist stood behind Terrible, rocking slightly on his feet like he wasn’t sure if he should run or pretend everything was fine. Chess didn’t blame him. She was half ready to run herself, her legs twitching and her heart pounding. She was jumpy enough, she didn’t need two hundred and seventy pounds or so of furious man in front of her.

      “Do it.”

      Terrible clenched the opposite sides of the chair back, his biceps popping, as the artist drew closer. In his hand he clutched what looked like a small disposable cigarette lighter. What the …?

      He flicked his thumb. Terrible’s fingers tightened, his eyes shut, as the gunpowder packed into his open wound flared in a sharp, cauterizing burst of flame. Chess gave a high-pitched squeal that embarrassed her before it even left her mouth, but it was either lost in the smattering of applause or the men tactfully ignored it. Or they were afraid of what she might do if they made fun of her, which was the more likely. Most people had a highly inflated idea of what kinds of powers she had—unless they were dead, she couldn’t do much to them. Of course, there was no point in clarifying. Why take away that protection?

      She watched as the artist brought a couple of mirrors and angled them so Terrible could take a look, managing to catch a glimpse herself while he adjusted them. Lines, an impression of wings? The mirror moved too quickly for her to tell, but Terrible was apparently pleased. At least he didn’t look any angrier than usual as the artist began smearing antibiotic cream on the wound and applying gauze pads with tape.

      It was strange to see him without a shirt on, though. Chess tended to think of his bowling shirts as armor, and stripped of them he … well, he still looked like a tank.

      A surprisingly attractive tank. Tattoos and scars decorated his bare skin and a patch of thick dark hair spread over his chest and dipped down in a thin line to his waist, but underneath them was solid, sculpted muscle, exquisitely delineated, obviously created from real work and not trips to a gym.

      He glanced at her, then looked again with an eyebrow cocked, and she realized she was frankly staring. Heat rushed to her face as her fingernails suddenly became fascinating to her. It wasn’t until she heard him saying goodbye that she looked up again.

      Together they passed Rego, back out onto the bright street. Terrible had sunglasses, sleek black ones he snapped on the moment they left the doorway.

      “So who? Hunchback? Where Brain go, he still at yours?”

      “No, he took off.” She sketched out the conversations she’d had with him, and how he’d left before he could tell her what ever it was he seemed to be hinting at. “I think he might have seen the people who killed Slipknot. Maybe not the actual murder, but the same people.”

      Terrible leaned against his car and rubbed his chin, sunlight glinting off the spikes of his armband and the thick silver chain he wore on his wrist. “Aye, sound like it to me. I ain’t know where Brain rest. Got any clues?”

      She shook her head.

      “Look like we go see Hunchback after all.” His grin sent a shiver of fear through her body.

       Chapter Sixteen

      “And they crowded into the cities, seeking with their numbers to overwhelm the dead, and found it futile.”

      —The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 120

      The Chevelle’s tires squealed in protest as Terrible yanked the wheel to the right, sliding up in front of a ware house building by the docks in a cloud of dust and the Devil Dogs’ “354.” The car shook when he slammed the door.

      “You seem really worried,” she said, quickly adding “About Brain, I mean,” when he glared at her.

      “I ain’t.”

      “Then why are you so mad?” She rushed to catch up with him as he strode into an alley on the left of the building.

      “Hunchback been told,” he said. “Watch the young one. Get it, Chess? He seen us. We ain’t want nobody else hearing that, aye?”

      “He said he wouldn’t …”

      Terrible wasn’t listening. A small door, covered in cracked paint faded to the dusky color of unripe blueberries, hung slightly open halfway down the wall. Terrible yanked it open and СКАЧАТЬ