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

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      If they were in the Church now … no one was safe. Not the Elders, not the Goodys, not the regular employees. And definitely not the People, who counted on the Church to keep them safe. The Lamaru didn’t want to keep anyone safe. They just wanted power. Wanted control, wanted adulation. And would do anything to get it.

      So what were they doing now?

      Unfortunately there was no way to hold the elevator, no emergency brake or lever to flip. So she had twelve minutes to get as far away from here as she could, into the tunnels, if she was even right, and those doors were tunnels and not simply a couple of supply closets or utility rooms full of wires tangled like snakes.

      Chess shivered. It was always so cold down here, and silent. The train with its dim, blue interior and flat opaque headlights watched her with the incurious gaze of a predator as the elevator started returning to the surface. Six minutes up, six minutes back.

      Two doors cut into the damp cement walls, one on each side of the train. She’d lost her syringe full of lubricant, of course, but sound didn’t matter so much when there were none to hear it. Luckily the lock was easy to pick, a basic tumbler with a rolling catch that she lifted in about thirty seconds. How much time had passed now? One minute, two? Shit, she could almost feel that Lamaru in the room, his black-gloved hands reaching for her, his eyes burning dark from blood sacrifice or who-the-fuck-knew what kind of spells he’d been working … She spun around, ready, but saw only the train’s empty eye staring back at her.

      Wasting time. Back to work.

      It was just a closet, as she’d feared. A mop and bucket—she couldn’t imagine why they were there, unless it was simply that closets of this nature grew cleaning implements like fungus. Some wires. A fuse box—oh, fuck yeah.

      She jimmied it open with her thinnest pick. How much time had passed now? Three minutes? All of the fuses were lit, they gave no indication of whether or not the elements they controlled were in use, and the elevator shaft was tall enough that she wouldn’t hear the car itself until it got closer. No labels decorated the shiny black metal of the box, either. There was nothing to do but to flip them all, one by one, and if flipping one of them gave her no result at all, she could assume it powered the elevator and leave it off.

      Unless one powered more than just the elevator. Shit! All right, she’d leave them all off then, and get out of here as quickly as possible. Assuming she could. If that other door didn’t lead to a tunnel, but instead held another mop and bucket, she’d be down here all night, alone. In the dark.

      Still probably better than what ever her pursuer had in mind. And with any luck, he’d spend the night trapped in the elevator, suspended three or four hundred feet below the surface of the earth.

      She gave it another minute to be sure. If nothing else, freezing the elevator would stop him—the fuse box in the Church building was unreachable without several keys and a ladder—but if she could trap him he’d be caught in the morning, which would be nice. A Church member, involved with a secret magical organization. A secret anti-Church magical organization, one who’d been trying to overthrow the Church practically since it had come into existence. Was it wrong that for a moment she was glad the penalty was death?

      Did she care if it was wrong or not?

      The fuse switches were stiff, stiff and cold against her palm. Her right hand burned as she shoved with all her might against the switches. Fire shot up her arm as the first row finally gave. She’d torn the wound back open.

      The lights on the platform still burned dully. Chess stared across the cement for a few seconds, trying to estimate the distance between the doorway of the closet and the ditch where the tracks were, and shoved against the other switches.

      The platform disappeared. The closet disappeared. No light came from the train, from the silent fluorescents, from anywhere. She was seven hundred feet underground, in the darkness.

      Cursing herself for not having grabbed her matches before she cut the lights, she dug them out of her bag. While she was at it, she cursed herself for not buying a fucking lighter. One like Terrible’s, with an eight-inch inferno exploding from the wick.

      Shuffling her feet, she left the closet and made her way onto the platform to light the first match. The glow, almost lost in the blackness of the cavern around her, showed she was still a good fifteen feet from the edge of the ditch. She walked as quickly as she dared across to it, and sat on the cold rim just as the match burned down to her fingers.

      She had five matches left. Five matches, and who knew how many miles of long dark tunnel ahead of her. This sucked.

      The train loomed dark and silent beside her. She couldn’t see it but she knew it was there, could feel its presence the way she would have been able to feel a ghost had one shown up. So far none had. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to say that.

      With the power to the train out she should be able to walk straight across the tracks without worrying about the electric rail, but taking chances didn’t exactly appeal. So, using her left hand, she fumbled around until she found her electric meter, then fed the wire across the ditch—at least she hoped it was across the ditch. No reading. Still …

      Holding her pen like a wand, she slung the bag onto her back and bent over. The pen didn’t make a great cane, but it worked. She pushed herself off the ledge and dropped into the ditch on both feet. The gritty thump of her landing echoed through the platform.

      Wave the pen, take a step. Wave the pen, take a step. A trickle of sweat ran down her cheek despite the cold. Anything could be behind her, icy hands reaching out to close around her neck, to shove her down …

      She jerked upright, her neck craning despite the fact she could see nothing. Her breath left her chest in a whoosh.

      “Okay, Chess, you need to get it together,” she said aloud, then regretted it when her voice danced in the stillness around her and made it seem even darker, lonelier. Hostile.

      Stop being such a wimp! She forced herself to bend back over, to wave the pen and take another step, and to ignore the prickling on the back of her neck. It was behind her again, she knew it was—

      The pen clicked against the metal of the first rail. Good. She stepped carefully over it and continued. Maybe the thing waited at the other side, waited for her to blunder into it like a bee into a spiderweb. Then its cold, spindly arms would close around her, crushing the life from her body …

      Damn it! She would be down here all night if she didn’t grow a pair of fucking balls and get to that door on the other side. Why was she such a wimp, why couldn’t she—

      Terrible thought she was brave. She remembered it now, heard his voice in her head as if he stood next to her. “They scared. Not you, though.” Terrible thought she was brave, and if he—a man whose name was Terrible, a man whose path people scrambled to get out of—thought so, it must be true. She could do this, she would do this.

      Inch by inch she shuffled across the ditch, waving the pen in front of her. Two rails, then three, then she was dragging herself out of the ditch and trotting toward the wall with her hands out in front of her, feeling her way until she found the metal door, sliding her fingertips over the smooth painted surface until she found the lock, then pulling her picks out of her pocket.

      She’d never picked a lock in total darkness before, but she’d never picked one in total silence before either. Every click made by steel against steel amplified itself, СКАЧАТЬ