Authors: Craig Schaefer
The rest I did from the memory of Pixie’s stolen blueprints. Through the swinging door, hard left, and down a portrait-lined corridor in the dark, then another left. The kitchens were abandoned, lit by moonlight, and the remnants of the next course only half complete. Good. Everybody had bailed on cue.
The door on the far end of the room slammed open, and Meadow Brand barreled in with a gun.
A flickering stream of cards leaped from my pocket and fluttered into my hand as she pulled the trigger. One of my cards took the bullet for me, bursting with light as it tumbled to the floor with a spent .45 slug buried in its heart. I flicked out my fingers and another pair of cards went flying at her. She ducked behind a kitchen island, firing off a wild shot that slammed into the stove.
I dodged left as she jumped up again and opened fire. I tossed card after card into the air, flipping them up like dancing shields. I made it to a small table, kicked it over, and dropped to one knee behind it.
“Much as I’d love to finish this right now,” I said, “you’d better think about your boss.”
“What about her?” Meadow called back, prowling around the edge of the room and looking to flank me.
“You’re sharing the house with a pissed-off demon who’ll probably kill you both.”
“She’s heading for the panic room. She’ll be fine until the cops get here.”
I peeked over the edge of the table. Meadow fired off another round, and a chunk of wood exploded into sawdust.
“Exactly! So if she gets there before you, do you
really
think she’s going to risk opening the door to let you in? Or is she going to leave you to take your chances with Sullivan and his boys while she stays safe and sound?”
There was no answer for a moment. Then I heard Meadow hiss “
Fuck
!” and the sound of pounding footsteps as she ran for the panic room.
“No honor among thieves these days,” I muttered and ran out the service door.
I didn’t stop until the far end of Lauren’s driveway, on the edge of a road that snaked into desert darkness in both directions. Headlights strobed three times in the distance, right on cue. I walked toward them.
A white Audi Quattro rolled up and stopped at the side of the road. The tinted window rolled down, and Caitlin looked out at me expectantly.
I stuck out my thumb. “Gimme a lift, lady?”
“Nobody rides for free,” she said with a sly smile. “Did he fall for it?”
“Hook, line, and sinker.”
“Get in,” she said. “Now it’s time for the fun part.”
Forty-One
I
dialed my old number. Sullivan picked up on the first ring.
“I’ve got your book,” I said casually. “Just fell into my hand at the banquet, can’t imagine how.”
“So you do. Clever little thief.”
“Out of curiosity, don’t suppose you managed to kill Lauren and Meadow?”
“No such fortune. They hid in their little room of steel. We took our fallen soldiers and left. I’ll be paying them both a visit after I get my book back. What’s your price?”
“I want Alvarez. Get yourself another translator, but that poor guy’s been through enough.”
“The priest,” Sullivan said, “has not been harmed. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Even so. I want him. Also, I want my fucking phone back.”
“Trite. But very well. You’ll meet me at—”
“No,” I said. “
You
meet
me
. Get a pen and paper. I’ve got directions for you.”
• • •
Emma hadn’t been lazy. From a distance, the Silk Ranch was a graveyard for construction equipment. Cranes slept in the dark, their steel heads bowed, while a dump truck the size of a small building kept watch over a wasteland of bundled steel girders and bags of concrete mix. Only the lights inside the front gate burned against the night, the rest of the compound silent and still. Caitlin and I had been driving for hours, and dawn wasn’t far away.
We rolled in and parked by a cluster of empty cars. As we walked toward the main building, hand in hand, Emma and Ben came out to meet us. Ben’s eyes went wide.
“But I thought you two broke up—” he started to say, and I held up my hand.
“All will be explained. Here, hang onto this.”
I tossed him Alvarez’s book, and he clutched it tight.
“Spotters up the road just called in,” Emma said. “They’re about three minutes out, just like you expected.”
“Showtime,” I said. The four of us stood and watched as lights appeared in the distance. They slowly rumbled closer, winding through the shadows. Four SUVs, black on black. The last of the Redemption Choir.
The tails of Caitlin’s white leather trench coat rippled in a cold desert breeze. She only wore that coat when she was going to war.
The SUVs snaked through the gates and fanned out, splashing us in their headlights as they rumbled to a stop. I didn’t blink. Sullivan got out of the middle vehicle and walked toward us. His mahogany stick rapped against the hard-packed dirt with every step. He stopped about ten feet away.
“Caitlin,” he said.
“Sullivan.”
“I’ll admit, I’m surprised to see you here.”
“That was the idea,” she said.
“Such a pleasure, to end all my problems and avenge all the wrongs done me, on a single night.”
He lifted his hand. Behind him, the remnants of the Choir climbed out of the SUVs and joined him. Every one of them was packing heat. A lot of angry faces and a lot of guns.
“For someone with a reputation as a trickster,” Sullivan told me, “you certainly did fall for my little ruse. I knew what you were trying to do at the banquet. My goal, on the other hand, was to convince you to meet me somewhere remote. Somewhere I could finish you off without fear of interruption. So I prepared a—”
“I know,” I said. “The book’s a fake, and you let me steal it.”
He blinked.
“This was never about the book,” I said. “And it was never about Alvarez. Hell, it was only peripherally about you, but you dropped a golden opportunity in our laps. We wanted to lure you out here. So you dangled a fake book in my face, and I pretended to fall for it.”
“But, but how—”
“That part’s easy,” Caitlin said. “Daniel organized a meeting to discuss the plan of attack. Except it wasn’t the real plan.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just a little theater, for an audience of one. Ben. Your inside man.”
Ben stumbled back, his eyes wide, shaking his head as he groped for words. Emma turned to watch him. She didn’t look surprised. Just sad. Sad and tired.
“It’s not,” Ben stammered. “It’s not what you think.”
I nodded. “Yeah it is. See, I sussed you out early on. I told you I was going to meet with Alvarez, and not only did the Redemption Choir show up at the church, they knew my name. Someone had tipped them off that I would be there. Only one person in the world knew that. You.”
“I can explain that!” Ben said, taking another halting step back.
“You came late to the planning meeting. Remember those computer problems that kept you at the office?” I said.
Emma wriggled her fingers in a tiny wave. Her voice was soft. “I arranged that.”
“Working with your wife can be a hassle,” I said, “especially when she knows you’re stabbing her in the back. First, we had the
real
meeting, to give everyone their real instructions. Then we waited for you to show up, and told you exactly what we wanted you to tell Sullivan. That helped ensure he wouldn’t kill me out of hand—dumb move, by the way, Sully—and bringing you along for the operation made it look like I trusted you. Naturally, we expected you’d leave Alvarez at home and bring a fake book to the party.”
“But we knew,” Emma said, a slow current of anger welling up in her voice as she stared her husband down. “We
all
knew.”
“I don’t understand,” Sullivan said, shaking his head. “So you conducted an elaborate charade and risked your life to steal a manuscript you knew would be worthless? What was the point?”
“What
was
the point?” Emma asked Ben. “I want to hear your answer first. You lied to me. You turned your back on our marriage, our—”
“
I did it for Melanie
!” Ben shouted, his fear boiling over into rage. “As for you, you…fucking
abomination
, there isn’t a night I don’t regret marrying you or a day I don’t wake up praying for a way out of the nightmare you made my life. The things I’ve done, the things you’ve
made
me do, Christ…”
“Brother Ben came to me looking for absolution,” Sullivan said calmly.
“I don’t—” Emma said, crossing her arms as her voice hitched. “I mean, we’ve had our problems, but I had no idea—”
Ben sneered at her. “Of course you didn’t. Nothing exists if it isn’t all about you. Emma, I have hated you for
years
.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that. She stared at him, mouth agape, her eyes glistening.
“I could live with it,” he said, “somehow. But not Melanie. I won’t have you taking my daughter and making her just like
you
. You never told me the truth, when we decided to have a child. You never told me she’d be tainted. You never told me she’d be half…
monster
. Sullivan—he can help her, purify her. That was the deal, in exchange for feeding him information about everything you bastards said and did. I’m going to take her and start a new life, far away from here, where she can learn to be human. Sullivan can fix her.”
A small voice spoke up from the darkness at his back.
“Is that what you think, Dad?”
Melanie came out from where she’d been hiding around the corner of the ranch office. Tears streaked her cheeks, leaving muddy black smears of mascara in their wake.
“Do you think I need to be fixed?” she asked.
He turned, shaking his head.
“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no, no honey. No. You—you weren’t supposed to hear that, I mean, that’s not—”
“That I’m tainted? That I’m a monster?”
Ben dropped the book to the dirt and held out his arms to her, desperate. She stared at him in disbelief, not moving an inch.
“Honey,” he said, “you don’t understand. I love you. I love you so much. You know that. We’re going to go away and start over, rebuild our family—”
“My family is here.”
Ben swallowed hard. “No. No. I’m your family. I’m the one who loves you. I sacrificed—I did all of this—for you. All for you, Melanie. I’m the one who loves you!”
She took a deep breath and wiped her tears away. With her makeup smeared and her blue hair tangled, the teenager’s eyes still burned with ferocious dignity as she stared into her father’s face. She pushed her shoulders back and raised her chin.
“No, Dad. You only love half of me. And half just isn’t enough.”
Ben’s hands clenched and unclenched. His mouth moved soundlessly as his world came apart at the seams. He turned and pointed a trembling finger at Emma.
“This is your fault! You did this. You turned her against me.”
“Loath as I am to interrupt,” Sullivan said, leaning on his walking stick. “But I’m still failing to see the point of this little charade. What did you hope to accomplish?”
“Funny story,” I told him. “It all started the night I figured out Prince Sitri’s game—or thought I did. He’d sent me to kill Father Alvarez, you know that much, but I realized Alvarez wasn’t the point. Sitri knew I’d never do it. He just wanted to see if I’d give up and walk away, or if I’d come at him from a different angle. Surprise him. Show some fighting spirit. So I went to have a little heart-to-heart with the prince. And we made a deal.”
• • •
I had stood before the Conduit, bathed in the flickering glow of a half dozen candles. It wasn’t the Conduit anymore, though. Past the desiccated skin, the golden chains and excrement-caked robes, it was Prince Sitri pulling the creature’s strings now. It was his voice oozing from its bloodied throat, sleepy and sly.
“A deal?” he said. “Ooh, that sounds…dangerous. I do hope you’re not going to offer me your soul, Daniel Faust. While the literary allusion would be good for a chuckle, you are already damned. I don’t pay for what I can have for free.”
“No, just a friendly wager. I bet that I can give you something nobody else can. Something you want. If I fail, that’s the last of me. I’ll walk away, and neither you nor Caitlin will ever see me again. Hell, you can even kill me if you want. But if I succeed? You let Caitlin live her own life. She sees who she wants, when she wants, however she wants. You give her
choices
back. Because she works too fucking hard for you to treat her like a prize in your stupid little game.”
“Stupid?” Sitri said, his tone suddenly colder.
“Yeah. Stupid. You want to get off on making me jump through hoops? Fine. You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. But dangling Caitlin in front of me like the prize in a Cracker-Jack box is just wrong. She’s loyal to you. She breaks her back for you every goddamn day. So you know what I want? I want you to start giving her the respect she fucking deserves.”
“I’ve yanked out tongues,” Sitri said conversationally, “for less insolence.”
“I’m sure you have. Doesn’t change the fact that what I said is true, and you know it.”
The Conduit’s head bobbed slowly.
“And what if,” Sitri said, “that given freedom, her choice is to reject you? To abandon you, and take another lover?”
I shrugged.
“Then that’s her choice. That’s the point. This isn’t
for
me. It’s for her.”
“Well, then. You still have my attention. Tell me: what delightful little bauble will you offer me in exchange for this boon? What could you possibly have that a prince of hell, with legions at my command and golden wealth beyond the dreams of mortal kings, might desire?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “I’ll give you the Ring of Solomon.”
Forty-Two
“T
he Ring of Solomon,” Sitri mused, “is the most potent weapon against my kind ever created. Its wielder can compel and command, bind and banish, almost effortlessly. An infernal army would fall to its knees before the human who masters it.”