Pay Dirt Read online

I hesitated. There could only be one thing she meant by that. But the last time she’d touched one of the old gold coins, she’d nearly lost control. I didn’t think things would go much better in her current state.

  Hell, I supposed things couldn’t get much worse.

  I dug the coins out of my pocket and held them out to Lilian. Her wild flailing slowed as her smoke-filled eyes swept across the coins. She grabbed one, tossed it aside. The second one she batted out of my hand as well. But the third she took. She clasped it in her fist and pressed her hand to her forehead.

  She grew still. As still as the dead. Her muscles went slack, and she would’ve fallen flat on her face if I hadn’t been holding her. Her skin continued to flicker between warm and cold. Her broken jaw hung loose and her deathly groans ceased.

  I waited.

  I didn’t know what was happening. This wasn’t the way she’d reacted the last time she came into contact with the coin. I didn’t know what significance the coin had for her. I didn’t know a damn thing.

  So I waited. With aching bones and exhaustion pulling at my being, I waited.

  Then, after what felt like hours, there was a crackling sound, like electricity sparking from a bad connection. I smelled smoke and burning flesh. When I looked closer, I saw tiny blue sparks arcing between the fingers of the fist that clutched the coin.

  Suddenly, Lilian thrust her other arm out, shoving me away with superhuman strength. I tumbled to the ground as she lurched to her feet.

  “Lilian?” I said. “What’s happening?”

  She ignored me. Her eyes darted around, coming to rest on our wrecked car. Before I could say anything, she grabbed the hood and threw it back hard enough to shear off one of the already damaged hinges.

  I reached for her. “Lilian, what are you—”

  She reached in and grabbed hold of the car battery terminals.

  A crack like thunder split the air. Her body went rigid. She had the coin pressed against one of the battery terminals, and I could see it glowing through the skin of her hand. Lilian’s hair began to separate and lift into the air.

  She threw herself backward, severing the connection. Smoke drifted from her clothing. Her hands looked blackened, burned. She staggered back a few feet. For a moment, it looked like she would stay on her feet. But her strength failed her and she dropped back to her knees.

  As I approached her, the smell of burnt flesh filled my nostrils. She knelt with her head bowed, her hair only just beginning to settle back around her face. Licking my lips, I stopped a couple of paces away.

  “So, uh, how you feeling there, Slim?”

  She lifted her head. Her torn, broken face made a terrifying sight in the darkness. She looked at me with her one good eye. It was filled with red. A wisp of smoky blackness danced at the corners. But she fixed me with her pupil, and there I saw her. I saw Lilian.

  She reached up to her jaw and pushed. I heard bone grinding, and then a click. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, then ran her tongue along her cracked and torn lips.

  “Honestly?” she said. “I’ve felt better.”

  26

  I worked quickly, with one eye on the sky. Off to the east, the dark of night was starting to give way to a predawn gray. We needed to be gone before the sun came up.

  It was far from my best work, but with a little luck it would be enough. I didn’t have the time or ingredients to make a proper job of it. The wards I was creating would only last a few hours before their power faded. And even then they’d only just be strong enough to encourage casual passers-by to drive around the wreck of the car without noticing it. Luckily, this area wasn’t heavily trafficked even in the day. And hopefully by the time the wards faded, they wouldn’t be needed anymore.

  While I wove together the warding talismans, Lilian tended to her injuries. Somehow, it was even creepier seeing her move about now than it had been a short while ago when the monster inside her had claimed control of her body. This wasn’t some monster—it was undoubtedly the Lilian I knew. But there was no pretending she was human when she was unbothered by injuries like the ones she bore.

  She didn’t seem to need any pain relief. She just bound her broken arm so it didn’t wobble around and used a few strips of duct tape to secure any torn flaps of skin. If she was going to avoid attracting attention, though, we’d also need to find her something to cover her busted face.

  When I’d finished planting the warding talismans around the site of the crash, I headed off to search the block for alternative transport. After a few minutes of poking around behind old factories and offices, I found a small white hatchback that had seen better days. It looked like it had been left in the small office parking lot for at least a couple of weeks. Maybe it’d been ditched there by some joyrider. Holden and I had done the same plenty of times in our younger days.

  In the old days I’d always used a slim jim or a coat hanger to break into cars, but since I didn’t have my tools on hand I threw caution to the wind and just smashed the window. I popped the lock, climbed inside, and started hot-wiring it. It had been a long time since I’d done it, but my fingers remembered what to do. Within a minute I’d brought the car grumbling to life.

  Lilian was done tending to her injuries by the time I brought the hatchback to the site of the crash. She’d dragged the bodies of the two dead cultists over to the crumpled car. She’d also managed to pry open the trunk, revealing Stuckey’s headless corpse. I pulled up beside her and got out.

  She glanced down at the cultists’ broken bodies. “What shall we do with them?”

  “Let’s get them in the car. I know where we can dispose of them.” I hesitated. “We’ll bring Stuckey too.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t move right away. She rubbed her broken arm. “Ozzy, we need to—”

  “We don’t have much time,” I interrupted her as I moved to take the legs of the male cultist. “My wards won’t hold for long. Come on, give me a hand.”

  She went quiet, nodded, and took the cultist by the shoulders. Even with her broken arm she probably could’ve carried him by herself, but she let me pretend I was helping. We loaded the two cultists into the rear of the hatchback first, then laid Stuckey on top. Over the whole lot we threw a picnic blanket I found in the back seat of the hatchback. It didn’t quite cover all three bodies, but it was better than nothing.

  We gathered up everything we were taking with us—including the sword I’d swiped from the cultists and the guns the two unfortunates had dropped when Lilian killed them. All three coins were already back in my pocket. As I grabbed my bag, I conveniently overlooked the strange device Lilian had given me in the basement of the hag’s place. Lilian wasn’t so careless. She picked it up and flipped the plastic covering back over the switch. Her gaze lingered on it for a moment. She opened her mouth to speak to me, but I turned and climbed into the driver’s seat of the hatchback.

  She got in next to me a moment later. I started the car again and pulled away from the wreck.

  “Ozzy,” she said after a few seconds.

  “The cultist that got away,” I said, “he has a map to the tomb of Morley the Profane. York probably already has his hands on it. It won’t take him long to decipher it.”

  “Ozzy,” Lilian said again.

  I kept talking. “Those bastards aren’t going to screw around. They’ll head for the tomb as soon as they’re finished licking their wounds. I don’t know how many are left, but even York alone is dangerous. Holden and Ursula are trapped in the tomb. If York finds them, he’s not going to let them walk out of there.”

  “Ozzy!” Lilian snapped.

  “What?”

  “Are we going to talk about what just happened?”

  “What is there to talk about?”

  She sighed and leaned her head back against the headrest. “I never wanted you to see me like that.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t be stupid. You couldn’t help it.”

  She stretched her unbroken
arm out in front of her, examining her fist. “I really fucked them up, didn’t I? Christ. I can still feel that woman’s skull breaking.”

  “That wasn’t you, Lilian. Don’t let that shit stick in your head.”

  “That’s the thing. It doesn’t stick. It feels like something I did in a dream. Like something I saw in a movie.” She turned to me. “It was real for you, though, wasn’t it? I guess that’s why you’re not looking at me.”

  “I’m not looking at you because I’m driving,” I said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  I exhaled through my nose. I realized my shoulders were tensed so tight they were beginning to ache. I was grinding my teeth as well. With a conscious effort, I tried to force myself to relax. It didn’t help much.

  “Seeing you kill those guys like that…yeah, it was rough. But I’ve seen terrible things before. Done them, too. Half my friends in this town are monsters. I can keep your Dr. Jekyll and your Mr. Hyde separate in my head. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Then what—”

  “I nearly did it, Lilian.”

  “Did…?” she began, then she seemed to understand. “Oh. Right.”

  “If I’d flipped that switch, what would have happened?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know for sure. I haven’t fully tested—”

  “Lilian.”

  She bowed her head. “I don’t want to die. But…but if I lose myself, and I can’t bring myself back…I don’t want to exist like that. To become nothing but hate and death…” She sighed. “Next time, Ozzy, you can’t hesitate.”

  I nearly hit the brakes. “Next time? Like hell.”

  “No,” she said forcefully. “This will happen again. And one day I won’t be able to pull myself back.”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out the device. I kept my eyes on the road, but at the corner of my vision I could see it there in her hand. The unidentifiable piece of tissue floated inside the fluid-filled tube.

  “I know it’s a terrible thing to ask of you,” she said. “I know that. That’s why I’m asking you. Not Alcaraz, not anyone else. You’ll know when it needs to be done. And you’ll know it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I don’t know where the hell all your faith in me came from, but it’s badly misplaced. I’m not exactly knocking it out of the park right now. People keep getting hurt and dying when I should’ve been protecting them. Half the ghouls in town are probably on a war footing by now. Early’s out of action. Everything’s gone to shit. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I mean, look at me, Lilian.”

  “I am looking at you,” she said. “You’re hurt. Scared. But I can see in your eyes you’re not going to stop. Not until you find your friend. I know you’ll suffer though anything for the people you care about.” She held out the device again. “Even this.”

  I grunted and shook my head. I was having trouble speaking.

  “Please, Ozzy,” she said.

  “Hell,” I muttered. Without looking at her, I snatched the device out of her hand and stuffed it into my pocket. I could feel the terrible thing pressing against my side.

  “Thank you.”

  “There’s one condition. If you really do Hulk out again, I expect you to do your damnedest not to make me use this thing. Keep a car battery on hand or something. What the hell was that back there, anyway? With the coin and everything.”

  “I…I’m not sure. I think…” She trailed off.

  “What?”

  “I think one of those coins was mine.”

  I frowned. “You mean…before you died?”

  She nodded slowly. “You know how sometimes you’re in, say, a secondhand bookstore, and a book cover catches your eye. And as soon as you see it, you know you’ve read that book before. Maybe when you were a kid or something. You can’t remember a damn thing about it, but you know you’ve held that same book in your hands before. It’s like that.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was in possession of one of those coins for a while after Morley was killed.”

  “Or maybe you were one of the ones who killed him,” I said.

  She didn’t seem to know how to reply to that, and to be honest I kind of regretted saying it. I decided to press on.

  “So when you said you needed a connection, that was what you meant? A connection to your past?”

  She nodded.

  “And that helped you regain control somehow?” I asked.

  “I can’t explain it, Ozzy. I don’t understand half the things I can do. Sometimes I just…know. It wasn’t enough to just force down the monster. I had to find some connection to the revenant, to the person I was before. And I had to exploit that connection.” She shrugged. “It was enough. For now, at least.”

  “We need to get you back to the hag. Maybe she can—”

  “She’s done all she can. I’m on my own now.”

  “But…there’s gotta be something we can do, Slim.”

  She smiled sadly, shook her head. “Not every problem has a solution. You need to realize that, Ozzy.” She paused. “We both do.”

  “Doesn’t mean we stop fighting,” I said.

  “No,” she agreed. “No it doesn’t.”

  We were silent for a few seconds as we headed out of the industrial park. The car radio was turned down low, but I could tell it was set to some oldies station. Some mid-century crooner was doing his best to drown out his musical accompaniment. I was happy just to listen along. Once, I’d thought I’d never be able to hear music again. But deals could be struck, sacrifices could be made. The future was always uncertain.

  Maybe, just maybe, Lilian could be saved from herself. I had to hold onto that hope, at least.

  Lilian spoke again, false cheeriness in her voice. “So, where are we headed, boss? Home?”

  Christ, how I wanted to go home. I’d been fantasizing about my bed since I left the factory.

  But if I stopped now, even for a second, I might not have the energy to keep going. I couldn’t afford for that to happen. Not now.

  That wraith was still out there. So was York. And unless I was very much mistaken, they were both headed for the tomb. Holden and Ursula may have been able to hide from the wraith’s unearthly senses by sealing themselves inside the tomb, but that wouldn’t protect them now. The wraith had almost certainly overheard my conversation with Holden. It knew where it had to go now. I had to stop it.

  “Soon,” I said. “But not yet. First I have to talk to someone. Take us to the train graveyard.”

  27

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lilian asked. “I was under the impression that you weren’t on the best of terms with the ghouls right now.”

  I scrambled over the fence at my usual spot. Despite the amount of practice I was getting climbing the chain-link fence, it still wasn’t a very elegant thing to watch. I dropped down on the other side and winced as pain radiated through my bruised and tired muscles.

  I turned back to Lilian and spoke to her through the fence. “This community doesn’t survive because we’re all the best of friends. It survives on the principle of mutually assured destruction. We work together, or we die together.”

  “You stole that line from Early, didn’t you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied. “You coming or what?”

  With a shrug, she eyed up the fence, took a couple of steps back, and launched herself at it. I was gratified to see she climbed the fence no more gracefully than I had. Granted, I had fewer broken arms than she did, but I’d take my victories where I could get them.

  The glow of dawn was creeping across the sky. It was a gray, cloudy morning. A thin mist clung to the ground, swirling about our feet as we trudged across the dirt and gravel and old rail lines. The depot and the lines of abandoned train cars loomed ahead of us. There was a heavy silence in the air. It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized why.

  A large fire
pit had been built just outside the depot, sheltered on one side by a series of old engines. The fire had reduced to embers now, with only a thin trail of smoke drifting into the morning sky. A few yards away, a large makeshift table had been built out of corrugated iron and old crates.

  A small crowd of ghouls ringed the table. They moved about, approaching the table for a few seconds before drifting away again to make room for the others. They weren’t particularly well-dressed, but all of them wore at least some white.

  I recognized several of the younger ghouls in the crowd. Some still sported bruises from our scuffle in the woods outside Isidora’s cabin. Others in the crowd were older. Older in ghoul terms, I mean. None of them could’ve been more than fifty.

  None of them spoke. Some of the ghouls formed small clusters, but they weren’t even talking in whispers. There were only two sounds. One was the crunching of footsteps as the ghouls moved about. The other was chewing.

  As the ghouls wandered about, I managed to get a better look at the table they surrounded. A headless figure lay on the table, stripped naked. His flesh had turned the brown of well-cooked meat.

  He was missing the lower halves of his legs. I caught a glimpse of the tip of one thigh bone sticking out from the bottom of the stump. As I watched, another ghoul approached the table and dug her fingers into the cooked flesh of his thigh. A hunk of meat tore away easily. As she moved away from the table, she brought the thigh meat to her mouth and began to chew.

  They were eating him. They were eating Habi.

  Lilian must’ve noticed me going green. “You okay?”

  “Kind of.”

  “What is this?”

  The breeze changed direction, and I caught the smell of cooked meat on the air. It smelled disturbingly delicious. I became aware that I’d barely eaten in the last twelve hours. My stomach rumbled.

  “I think it’s a funeral,” I whispered.

  None of the ghouls seemed to have noticed us yet. We were still thirty or so yards away, standing in the long shadows cast by an old box car. I could see Sal circulating among the ghouls. There was a grease stain on her white top. I wanted to catch her attention, preferably without alerting the rest of the ghouls to our presence. I didn’t have time for another fight.