The Voodoo Killings Read online

  I checked the time on the disposable cell: 11.

  I tightened my grip on Cameron’s arm and picked up my pace. I still had one hell of a night ahead of me.

  CHAPTER 3

  UNDERGROUND

  The alley out back of my apartment building ran towards First Avenue and up into Pioneer Square. For an alley, it was well lit; people didn’t want their businesses and apartment buildings getting broken into. Thieves tend not to like lights, or so Aaron and Sarah once told me: more chance of getting caught on someone’s security camera.

  Tonight the alley was filled with the scent of stagnant water and wet cobblestones. Like everywhere in Seattle, it had a permanent accumulation of puddles. Even more so here, because we were in one of the older sections of the city, and the drainage was lousy. The only time the puddles dried up was during the summer heat waves, and even then the ground looked as if it was just begging for someone to turn on a garden hose. As if dry was an affront to the natural order of Seattle.

  It took us fifteen minutes to reach our destination: the dead-end brick wall of the Downtown Mercantile. It was the only heritage building in the city I couldn’t stand. It wasn’t just the lack of upkeep that irked me, and the way the walls had settled at weird angles, breaking more than a few building codes I’m sure, but the odd mix of bricks and stones that had been used to build the walls in the first place. It never ceased to amaze me that the Mercantile had managed to drag itself into the twenty-first century. It sure as hell hadn’t deserved to. Adding insult to injury, the store itself sold Chinese-made souvenirs to tourists and served bad coffee….This was Seattle, home of the green mermaid logo; there was no excuse this side of the mirror for serving bad coffee in this city.

  Cameron stared up at the refitted antique flood lamps illuminating the wall, completely fixated. I scanned the nearby windows checking for late night onlookers. Not that I’d ever seen any, but there’s a first time for everything.

  I felt the buzz in my jacket pocket from my regular phone and swore under my breath as I fumbled it out of the pocket. I glanced down at the number. “Shit.” University campus. Probably that frat house calling about Nate. They’d been hounding me for a week to run a seance on Saturday night. I’d have to corner Nate about it later; we needed the money. That is, if he swallowed his pride and showed up at Damaged Goods.

  Cameron broke free of whatever silent communion with the lamppost he’d been caught up in. He reached above me to run his hand along a charred brick, a remnant of the great fire.

  Tactile and visual observation. He might keep forgetting my name, but something was working.

  I made a last scan of the windows around us, and when I was confident that no one was watching, I crouched down and grabbed a corner of a four-by-four sheet of plywood leaning against the wall just below an antique grated window. “Cameron, help me with this,” I said.

  He gripped the other side of the plywood sheet.

  “On the count of three. And make sure you don’t hurt yourself. I don’t know how well you’ll heal.”

  He nodded without looking up.

  “All right, one, two, three—”

  The plywood came free, exposing a pair of cellar doors with rusted hinges and a lock mechanism in the green copper plate that held the doors closed. The lock was recessed into the copper plate and looked like a rotating puzzle piece with Chinese characters etched around a central ring. Unless you had the combination, nothing short of a grenade would open it—and I’m not sure even a grenade would do the trick.

  I knelt down, closed my eyes and tapped the barrier, slowly this time, so the nausea didn’t overwhelm me, and funnelled the Otherside into the lock. When the energy bound to the lock arced back, I opened my eyes.

  Three rings of Otherside-etched symbols circled the locking wheel outside the Chinese characters, along with an arrow in the central ring that reminded me of a feather. This was a damn good way to keep people out: not only did you need the combination, you had to charge the symbols too.

  Now, let’s hope Lee hadn’t changed anything in the month since I’d last been here. I began turning the outer wheel, setting the Otherside-etched symbols on the central arrow from memory. Each time the right symbol lined up with the arrow, a new vein of gold Otherside spilled into the shallow metal trough that kept the doors sealed shut. When I reached the last symbol in the sequence, the copper plate groaned and the doors opened with a hiss of air. I pulled my penlight out and used it to illuminate the white cellar stairs.

  “After you,” I said. “Make sure you don’t bump your head.”

  Cameron looked down the steps. “What’s down there?”

  “The underground city,” I said.

  He glanced one last time at the sodium lamps overhead and took his first hesitant step, testing the stair for stability. I lit the way for him so he didn’t fall and break his neck.

  “It looks more like a pit than a city,” he said when he was halfway down.

  “Lesson one. Things are rarely what they seem down here, Cameron,” I said as I followed him to the bottom, crouched to avoid smacking my own head on the low ceiling. The cellar doors closed behind us on one of Lee’s set time springs. As soon as they clicked shut, the metal lock whirled back into place and the metal strips hissed shut, sealing away any residual lamplight from outside.

  The cellar ceiling was only five feet high. The room was originally built to hold slabs of salted ice, so height hadn’t been an issue. Two people could fit, but without much manoeuvring room. There was also no obvious way out except back up the way we’d come. Claustrophobia at its best. But Cameron seemed to be holding it together. Too tall to stand, he crouched by the foot of the stairs as I turned the penlight on the far brick wall of the cellar and reached out to tap the barrier one last time. Four times in less than an hour? I was in for one hell of an Otherside hangover tomorrow.

  I took a good look at each brick, searching for the one that glowed with Otherside. Unlike the lock outside, the symbols on the brick wall rotated on a constant basis. The only way to know which one to push was to tap the Otherside and scan them all. Again, great security since only experienced practitioners could tap the barrier back to back like that. Pushing the bricks by trial and error was a bad idea. Think cave-in.

  Now where the hell was it?

  Cameron had started to fidget, so I began talking while I scanned to distract him.

  “There’s a public entrance to the underground in Pioneer Square. The ruins of the old Seattle are nice down there. All spiffed up for the tourists.” Or so I’d heard; I hadn’t set foot in the tourist section of the underground since the late nineties. “But that’s not the part we’re heading to.”

  “This doesn’t look like an entrance to anything except someone’s basement,” Cameron said.

  “That’s the idea.” At last I caught the gold glow of an etched Chinese dragon on one of the bricks—one of the four symbols Lee used to mark the passageway. Holding the penlight in my mouth so I could use both hands, I put my back into pushing on the brick.

  Almost immediately, large gears somewhere behind the wall began to grind and Cameron almost tripped over himself backing up to the stairs as the sound of large metal plates colliding rang through the cellar. The room began to shake as the wall rattled against the mortar.

  “Don’t worry, it’s supposed to do that,” I shouted. Not surprisingly, it didn’t have the calming effect I would have liked.

  At last, bricks separated down the length of the wall and cold air seeped out, filling the cellar. The gears kept grinding until the wall was fully retracted, exposing the passageway.

  I shone the flashlight down the tunnel, taking note of all the dust in the air. I shook my head. “Lee needs to get someone to sweep this out.”

  I did up the collar of my jacket as far as it would go to ward off the chill and stepped inside. Not for the first time, I was glad I’d never told Aaron about this place. Aaron might be sympathetic to the paranormal, but I wasn
’t sure how far that would stretch now that everything to do with permanent zombies was illegal.

  Cameron was halfway back up the stairs. “Come on,” I said. “The tunnel ceiling is higher. You can stand straight and not hit your head.” I started down the passage.

  “You’re out of your mind if you expect me to follow you in there.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Cameron was glaring at me, his arms crossed over his body as if that would protect him from whatever was in here.

  I shrugged. “You have a choice. Stay there in the dark or follow me. Up to you.”

  I didn’t get two feet before I heard Cameron coming after me, brushing up so close against my shoulder it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I knew Cameron probably wouldn’t go feral, but that didn’t stop the reaction.

  Twenty feet into the tunnel, I picked up the faint scent of metal, the kind I associated with stagnant water. God, I hoped Lee had cleared the rainwater from the tunnel this week. Last time through, I’d almost ruined my leather boots when I’d had to wade. I kept my penlight and eyes on the ground, just to be sure.

  The entire Seattle underground was constructed of brick, one of the only reasons so many of the buildings survived the 1889 fire. The tunnels all looked the same: red-brick arches that had faded to a dull brown. Every now and then we passed a section boarded up with wood that led to buildings that had been closed off at the surface and abandoned. I shone the flashlight through the cracks of each as we passed by. I don’t care how long a building has been abandoned; between the rats and the poltergeists down there, it pays to be careful. Fifteen boarded-up buildings later, I smelled the sixteenth before my light revealed it. Rotten eggs. It was the old sawmill. I covered my nose, knelt down beside the entrance, and shone the flashlight into the space.

  “Cameron, unless you want to see another ghost tonight, I’m going to recommend you turn around and face the wall until I say ‘all clear,’ understand?” I waited until I heard Cameron turn.

  “Des?” I whispered. “You in there?”

  No answer. Damn it, he was probably holed up somewhere lazing around or drinking. Lee wouldn’t be happy about that; Des was paid to guard the entrance, not take breaks. I could get him back to his post through a pocket mirror, but I didn’t want to tap the barrier again tonight.

  I tried again, whispering louder. “Des, I mean it. If I have to pull another globe to find you, I’ll—”

  A loud, derisive snort. “You’ll what, Kincaid?” Des said from somewhere inside the ruined sawmill.

  The ghost of a man in his mid-fifties with a logger’s beard and a pair of wire spectacles—real wire spectacles—balanced on his nose floated out from behind a pillar. Or the head and upper torso did. The rest of him trailed behind like tendrils of smoke.

  “You aren’t that tough, Kincaid,” Des said, his eyes glowing red behind the glasses. Unlike Nate and most ghosts, Des had no problem carrying a pair of glasses around; he was a poltergeist.

  “Des, for Christ’s sake. The least you could do is put your pants on,” I said.

  Des snorted and disappeared right in front of me, re-forming a moment later inches from my face. “You’re noisy enough to wake the damned dead,” he said.

  “Des, you are the damned dead. And the dead don’t need to sleep. Now hurry up and let me by.”

  He smiled. It wasn’t friendly. “Know the new password?”

  “Fuck off?” I tried.

  His eyes glowed a brighter red and the air around me chilled. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady—”

  “I’m not a lady, and if you don’t let me by, I’ll tell Lee you’re the one sneaking rotten eggs into the tunnels.” I had no idea why, but Des was obsessed with stealing eggs. It’s not like he could eat them. He just left them. Everywhere. To rot. Lee still figured it was the work of rats. The only reason I knew it was Des was that Nate had caught him stealing a jar of eggs from a bar once and had followed him out of perverse curiosity.

  Des regarded me through the spectacles. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  If Des had still been alive, I’d have been a hair’s breadth away from his face. “Try me.”

  Des growled, “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, Kincaid.” As quickly as he’d appeared, he disappeared.

  I shook my head. Poltergeists are ghosts with serious anger management issues. The older they are, the more powerful; they’ve had more time for their issues to fester. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—poltergeists are the only ghosts that can exert any real will this side of the barrier, including causing actual physical damage. Hence, Des’s sentry duty.

  “Come on, Cameron,” I said, crawling through the opening. When he hesitated, I added, “Don’t worry, it’s safe.” Well, that was mostly true.

  Cameron was partway through the crawl space when Des reappeared. “Who the hell is this?” he said, diving in to get a better look.

  Shit. “It’s a zombie, you idiot.”

  Cameron scrambled back and raised his arm to cover his face.

  “Des, stop it, you’re scaring him.”

  Des turned on me, eyes blaring poltergeist red. “That, Ms. Strange, is my job.”

  “I’m taking him to see Lee.”

  The poltergeist wavered in front of me before turning to stare down my terrified zombie. If ghosts look bad to the undead, poltergeists have to look worse. I felt sorry for Cameron: barely dead, no memory, and he’d already had to deal with two ghosts in one night.

  Des hovered for a long moment, snarling at Cameron.

  “Des,” I said, warning in my voice.

  Finally, he tore his eyes off Cameron. “Fine, Kincaid. Take him to see Lee. But next time, tell me you got company.” He dissolved into a grey cloud and flew at Cameron, who backpedalled faster than I thought a zombie could move.

  “Asshole,” I said under my breath.

  “I heard that,” Des said, but his voice was faint and he didn’t reappear.

  Cameron stared at the spot where Des had been a moment ago.

  I sighed. “Not fun, but the worst of it is over. Come on.”

  He didn’t move.

  I tried again. “If you stay here, Des will come back. He’s a bit of an asshole that way. All poltergeists are.”

  That did the trick. Fear, the almighty motivator.

  I stuck the flashlight in my mouth, and we crawled through the collapsed sawmill until we reached the log chute. “Through here,” I said.

  Cameron took one look over my shoulder. Even without shining the flashlight in his face, I could tell he was glaring.

  “I’m dead. That doesn’t mean I have a death wish,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Look, I’m going first. Just follow me. The city is on the other side. Promise.”

  Cameron swore but crawled after me.

  When I said it was just on the other side, I meant it. The chute was only a few yards long. Halfway along, I started picking up the thrum of the city, amplified by the tunnels ahead. At the end, I lowered myself down the four-foot drop into another brick-lined tunnel. The difference between this tunnel and the previous ones was that it was lit by a trail of yellow paper lanterns. I figured it was Lee’s way of saying, “If you’ve made it this far, chances are good you belong. If not, we’ll probably kill you, so no point making your last few moments miserable tripping through the darkness.” Lee was nothing if not polite.

  Once I helped Cameron down, we followed the trail of paper lanterns. The noise of the city became louder with each step, and soon the lanterns gave way to lampposts. The tunnel started to widen and the dusty brown bricks turned bright red, as if someone here bothered to take care of them. Then the tunnel stopped, the red bricks turning into a spiral stairwell.

  At the bottom was the start of a floodlit boardwalk with storefronts on one side and a market on the other. The underground city. No one was passed out on the steps yet, which meant I didn’t have to worry about Cameron stepping on one of
them and scaring himself as he descended.

  I motioned for Cameron to carry on. He gripped the railing beside me and stared down, speechless. I gave him a second to catch his breath. Memory or not, it’s not every day you stumble onto an entire city hidden underground.

  Finally, he said, “It’s beautiful.”

  Not the exact descriptor I’d use, but I’m not a zombie. “Keep hold of the railing and try not to trip,” I said, and we started down the spiral steps into the city.

  The city unfolded in a series of wide tunnels with stores and apartments recessed into the walls all the way up to the arched ceilings. Those ceilings were high, considering how far down we were. Wrought iron lampposts reached out over the tunnels, gaslight lending the vibrancy of a city that comes alive at night.

  The twenty smaller tunnels, or streets, spilled out into First Street, a “main street” that stretched out for a mile. As on the other streets, the shops and apartments here resembled their frontier Seattle roots, even though they’d been built after the great fire. The only section of the city that had escaped the flames was the market, a large alley off to our left as we stepped off the stairs onto the city boardwalk. A dead-end offshoot of First Street, it was one of the few places large enough to accommodate rows of stalls.

  “Try not to stare, Cameron,” I said, and pushed him along the boardwalk and away from the staircase, which descended for two more levels, each with an identical layout. The second level wasn’t somewhere I went often, because it catered to zombies and ghouls. As for the third level? Well, the third ended at the subterranean docks. If you found yourself needing to go down there, you had big problems.

  I kept a hand on Cameron as we moved through the crowds coming out of the market. The pedestrian traffic rivalled that of any busy street in downtown Seattle, except that nothing here ever really shut down. Nate compared it to Las Vegas for zombies, though I didn’t see it. Not enough lights and the gambling broke out into fist fights more often than not, which was one of the reasons Lee didn’t keep poker tables in her establishment anymore.