Ghostwalkers (30 page)

“And what? I'm not interested in buying myself my own country.”

“That's not what I'm saying. We can take this back to Paradise Falls and distribute it evenly between the remaining residents. Don't you see, Grey? We can make them all rich. But we give it to them on the condition that they move the hell away from here. Let Deray have the damned land. It's falling apart anyway and who wants to stay and fight someone who can raise the sodding dead? No, let's make everyone rich on the condition that they bugger off out of here. Sound like a plan to you?”

Grey holstered his gun and rubbed a hand over his jaw. The mountains of metal gleamed in the lantern light.

“Or,” said Grey, “we could use this money to hire us a private army and go and reclaim this land from Deray. Walking dead or not, he can't stop an entire army, and we can hire ten thousand men—and pay them well enough to guarantee their loyalty.”

The Sioux smirked at him. “And that would allow Jenny Pearl to keep her farm and earn you her undying gratitude and affection.”

“You say it like it's a bad thing.”

They grinned at each other.

“Either way,” began Looks Away, but his words were instantly cut short by a terrible high-pitched scream of unbearable horror.

Not a child's scream this time.

The shriek that rang through the underground treasure chamber was torn from a woman's throat.

 

Chapter Forty-Eight

“Veronica!” cried Looks Away.

A second scream tore the air.

“Maybe it's not her,” growled Grey as they snatched up their weapons and each took a lantern.

“Dear God let it not be so,” said the Sioux as he broke into a run.

Grey was right on his heels.

The path between the stacks of precious metals was narrow and long.

The scream faded to a harsh silence as they ran and thereafter all Grey could hear was the slap of shoe leather and the pants and grunts of their breathing. The rows of precious metals gave out and the walls were bare. The light from their lanterns rolled before them and it seemed as if the long dark of that place was endless. Then they saw the rear wall. It was set with a single iron door and, as before, the door stood partly open. At first Grey saw what he thought was some thick, pale snake lying across the open threshold, but as they drew near he saw that it was an arm.

A man's arm.

They slowed to a careful walk.

The arm reached out from the other room, fingers splayed, muscles slack.

They moved cautiously now, angling to let their light spill inside while staying outside of the line of any ambush gunplay. As they shifted, Grey saw that the arm was thick and flabby, without apparent muscle and the hand bore no trace of the calluses of manual labor. There was a large emerald ring in a gold setting on the index finger.

“Is that Chesterfield?” he asked quietly.

“No. That was his foreman. I recognize the ring.”

In the lantern light the arm gleamed like a fat slug.

Grey pushed the door open the rest of the way, looking for the owner of that limb. However the arm was all there was. The other end was a ragged stump that lay in a small puddle of blood. It was immediately clear that no blade that had cut the arm from its owner. The wound was savage, raw.

“Something tore it off,” said Looks Away.

“Something like what?”

The Sioux had no answer.

They stepped inside, guns up and out, ready to fight, to kill.

The room beyond was another of the circular chambers and there was a second set of spiral stone steps. There, sitting on the third step down, was a woman.

Middle-aged, lovely in a faded way, with masses of dark hair pinned up in a bun, and a sheer dressing gown that offered very little concealment to her ample curves. However the gossamer was stained with blood and soot, and that handsome face was white with shock and blood loss.

She sat in a pool of blood.

It ran over the edge of the step and down to the next and the next. She held a broken silver letter opener in one hand, the blade stained with gore. Her other hand was clamped against a dreadful slash that had opened her from breastbone to hip. Bubbles of red expanded from between her lips, swelled and burst, misting her face with tiny dots of crimson.

“Dear god,” said Looks Away as he rushed over. “Veronica!”

The woman's eyelids were closed but opened at the sound of her name. Her eyes were a dark green, but they were unfocused and glassy with shock and pain.

Looks Away set his lantern down and laid the shotgun on the top step. Then he knelt and very gently brushed a few wisps of dark hair from her brow.

“Oh, Veronica,” he murmured, “what have you gotten yourself into?”

His voice was soft, his tone familiar, his touch intimate. It made Grey sad because the wound the woman was trying to stanch was horrific. Muscle and bone were torn, and through the gaping slash he could see the bulge of a purple coil of intestine.

“Thomas … oh, my sweet Thomas. My sweet man…”

“My dear,” said the Sioux, “who did this to you?”

She mouthed some words and they both bent to hear. “The chickens got out.”

“The what? What do you mean?”

“Isn't it … strange? I thought they were … chickens.”

She coughed and fresh blood leaked from the corners of her mouth.

“Grey—?” asked Looks Away, his fingers pressing over hers to try and seal what could not be mended. “Grey, we need to do something.”

Grey did not move. There was nothing either of them could do.

Veronica Chesterfield raised her eyes and looked into Looks Away's face. “I'm sorry, Thomas…,” she said.

“No, no, no,” he said quickly and softly. “No, it'll be fine, lass. We'll sort this out and—.”

“Mrs. Chesterfield,” said Grey, “who did this? What happened?”

“Damn it, Grey, not now,” snapped Looks Away, but Veronica smiled at him. There was blood on her lips, but she managed a faint smile.

“I … came down here to hide,” she said in a faint voice. “Isn't that funny? Me thinking that it was safe down here?”

“What do you mean? Who did this?”

“Aleksander was very upset with Nolan. So … upset.” Her eyes sharpened for a moment.

“He came for us, Looks. He sent them for us. From the sky … from the shadows. From everywhere.”

“Why?” begged Looks Away.

“It was because of Nolan,” she said in a faint voice. “Nolan has been naughty. He thought Aleksander would not know … but the devil always knows.”

“What happened, Mrs. Chesterfield?” asked Grey. “Help us understand exactly what happened here.”

“Don't you know?” Her green eyes shifted toward him. “They opened the doorway to Hell and all the chickens got out…”

The words chilled Grey to the marrow.

Veronica coughed and the wound tried to gape wider. Looks Away uttered a small cry and clamped both hands over it. Tears boiled into the corners of his eyes.

“Grey,” he begged, “please…”

Grey came and sat down on the step next to his friend. He placed one hand on the Sioux's shoulder and the other over the hands trying to hold back the inevitable. It was all he could do in an impossible situation.

“He…,” began Veronica and her voice was noticeably weaker, “Nolan made a deal with the Devil. He did. Everyone thought … they were enemies … that they were at war … with each other. Then he broke his deal … broke his word … and the Devil came for him. With a ship that sails through the sky … with soldiers and their clockwork guns … with other things…”

She shuddered and coughed and blood bubbled from between her lips.

Grey plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Looks Away, who dabbed at the blood on Veronica's mouth.

Even then, even dying, she favored him with a smile and a courteous little nod. It was so genteel a thing that it touched Grey's heart. He suddenly found that he liked this woman.

“When you say he made a deal with the Devil, ma'am,” he said, “do you mean with Aleksander Deray?”

“Yes,” she said. “With him. With … the Devil.”

“What was the deal?” asked Looks Away.

“They … wanted … it all…”

“All of what?” asked Grey. “The mineral rights? The water? The ghost rock?”

“No,” she said weakly. She was fading and it was a terrible thing to witness. It was almost like the soul of the woman stood behind a faded portrait of what she had looked like in life, and with each moment the soul took another step backward. Withdrawing life from the image. Going away.

The tears burned their way down Looks Away's face.

“No,” repeated Veronica, “my husband and … that monster … they wanted it all.”

“All of what, sweetheart,” said Looks Away, and his voice cracked as he spoke.

“All…,” she said. “It's all … down there, Thomas. Down … there … When they came for Nolan, I ran down here to hide.”

“Where's Nolan,” asked Looks Away. “Where's your husband? Did they kill him, too? Did they turn him into one of those things?”

It seemed to cost Veronica a lot to answer. “The Devil … took … him … down to … hell…”

That last word stretched and stretched until it became clear it was riding a long, soft, terminal exhalation.

Her body settled against the steps and the confusion and pain drained away from her face, leaving behind only her beauty, cast now in cold serenity. Looks Away bent forward and kissed her lips, and then touched his forehead to hers. He sat that way for a long time.

Grey withdrew his hand and stood, then sagged back against the far wall. He stared down into the darkness below them. He fancied that he heard a ghostly voice whisper his name. Not down there, but somewhere behind him. Was it the voice of his sergeant, Harrison? Was it Corporal Elgin? Was it the whisper of the woman he'd loved and lost so many years ago? Was it Annabelle's voice calling him as she walked along with the others he'd failed and abandoned?

“I'm sorry,” he murmured. “I am so sorry.”

For a moment, for a splinter of time, he felt a shift in the world. In his world. As if that apology, given here in this blighted place, meant with a heavy heart, had caused his legion of ghosts to falter, to miss a single shambling step.

But that was absurd. Of course it was. The ghosts were nothing more than the shadows of a guilty conscience and nothing more.

Then, like a whisper inside his mind he heard the voice of the witch Mircalla.

The dead follow you everywhere you go
.

“I'm sorry,” he said again. Very quietly. So quietly only a dead ear could hear him.

That was when he saw the marks on the stone steps.

They were tracks half hidden by the shadows. Small, splay-toed. There were many of them, and their paths crisscrossed in and out of the lines of blood that had run down the steps. Grey frowned and squatted to study them.

What had the poor woman said?

They opened the doorway to Hell and all the chickens got out.

Yes. That's what she said.

The tracks on the steps were not made by a human foot. Not even the risen dead. These were much smaller and stranger.

Chicken tracks?

No.

They were a little too big and they were …

Strange was the only word that would fit into his mind.

So strange.

Little birdlike feet running through blood down into darkness.

Chickens had four toes.

These prints had two, and both toes had wicked claws.

 

Chapter Forty-Nine

Looks Away climbed heavily to his feet, pawing at the tears on his face.

“I didn't realize you two were this close,” said Grey awkwardly.

The Sioux gazed down at the dead woman and then at Grey.

“The thing is … we weren't,” he said softly. “We were lovers, but that was mostly intrigue. An escape for her and some compassion on my part. It was fun to make a fool of her husband and make fanciful plans about a future neither of us thought we'd ever share. But…”

Grey waited.

“But,” continued Looks Away sadly, “how close do two people really need to be before it's appropriate to grieve for them? She was a good person who deserved better than this.”

“Yes,” Grey agreed.

“Her husband can rot for all of me, but Veronica … she was truly an innocent in this. Her only crime was trying to help and wanting to be free of domestic oppression.” He sniffed again, then his sharp eye caught the footprints. “What the bloody hell is that?”

“Veronica said something about chickens…”

“Those aren't chicken tracks. A blind man could see that.”

“I know,” said Grey, “so what are they?”

“I'll be buggered if I know. They're as big as an ostrich, but it's not one of those either.”

“What's an ostrich?”

“A bloody big bird from Africa. Ugly as sin and cranky as a—. Hello! What's that?” He jogged down five steps and bent to retrieve an object Grey hadn't even seen. Looks Away held it out.

It was a feather. Long and stiff, colored a dark orange with a band of black.

“Do you recognize it?” asked Grey.

“No … I don't, and that's rather an odd thing. I'm no ornithologist, but I know my local birds, and I've never seen these markings. And certainly nothing similar on any bird that could have left tracks that big. Those prints look almost reptilian.”

“Can't be. They're in sets of two. No lizard I ever saw walks on two legs. And no bird I can think of could slash a person up like it did to your lady friend.”

Looks Away said nothing, but he let the feather drop from his hand and went back up the stairs to retrieve his shotgun.

They stood for a moment, glancing back the way they had come and then down into shadows.