Her words fired a memory in the back of my mind. My confrontation with Bob Payton, the rogue engineer who had conjured the smoke-faced men—the same creatures who nearly tricked Lauren Carmichael into triggering the apocalypse. He’d been giddy, telling me about the other realms he and his partners had plumbed.
“In our early work, we came across a world of absolute silence. An Earth stripped bare of resources, of life, of anything at all, crumbing under a cold and black sun. Lonely creatures walked the wastes, creatures born of entropy. The antithesis of life itself.”
And he’d opened a doorway from that world to ours. Just for a minute.
“Unintended consequences,” Cassandra said, her chapped lips spreading to flash a broken-toothed smile, “will fuck you raw, every time. Remember the old woman who swallowed the fly?”
“Cassandra, who is he? The man with the Cheshire smile. What’s his real name?”
“I told you already, those are two different questions. And he plays with names. Sometimes he comes as a friend, sometimes a lover, always with a smile. Sometimes he plays at being a god, but that’s all smoke and mirrors—”
“Please,” I said, “tell me his name.”
“I just told you his name, if you’d listen. He’s the man with the red right hand, the unweaver, the unmaker. He’s the last word on the last page of the last book, and he does not believe in happy endings.” Cassandra raised her chin, her voice strident, echoing off the ruins. “He came here to test us, to judge us, and we were found wanting.”
She turned away. Her head sagged.
“We did everything wrong this time around. Everything. He barely had to lift a finger to win. Tragedy never visited the Paladin’s doorstep, and she ended up a backwoods sheriff’s deputy; that one needs pain to drive her ambition. The Scribe met his death at the bottom of a vodka bottle. The Witch never found her Knight; they’re supposed to be unstoppable, united…but only for a little while. I could go on: the Thief, the Killer, all the others…”
She looked back toward me. Her eyes downcast.
“And as for the Prophet,” she said with a bitter little laugh, “she was just an old bag lady with a shopping cart full of cans. And nobody listened to her until it was much, much too late.”
13.
“If you need a name to hang on his smile,” Cassandra told me, “call him the Enemy. For that is his nature and his role to play.”
I turned in a slow circle, staring up at the broken skyline, trying to wrap my head around the sheer scale of destruction. “And how do I stop him? How do I stop this from happening?”
“You don’t. You can’t.”
I looked back at her. I blinked.
“I don’t believe in no-win situations, Cassandra. There has to be a way—”
She held up a hand and shook her head, her tone almost gentle.
“The very fact that you’re here, standing in the Thief’s shoes, means the Enemy has already won. He’s changing the rules. Perverting the natural order of things. I fear he’s found a loophole.”
“A loophole? In what?”
She strolled up the sidewalk, leaving her shopping cart behind, and waved for me to follow.
“A very, very long time ago, a time old as language itself—as old as wisdom —a story was told. A very special story. A mark was made upon the wheel of worlds. And so these souls return, again and again, cursed to play out their parts. Bound to meet their dooms or their triumphs, and woe to any mortal drawn into their tale. Only the Paladin, the chosen one, can defeat the Enemy.”
She shook her head at me, smiling sadly.
“And you are not the chosen one, Daniel Faust. You’re merely a man. Here by the grace of cosmic accident and bad luck. Your best hope is to scurry out of the way, like an ant dodging the footfalls of elephants.”
I stopped in my tracks. I grabbed her arm and made her stop too, turning her toward me.
“I don’t believe in ‘chosen ones,’” I told her. “I don’t believe in fate, and I sure as fuck don’t believe in rolling over and dying when I can fight instead. Tell me how to beat him.”
She studied me for a long minute, looking deep in my eyes.
“Perhaps,” she said, “all hope is not yet lost. I understand my twin is imprisoned. Another of the Enemy’s machinations, no doubt.”
“That’s right.”
“The Prophet’s voice must be heard,” she said. “For there to be the slimmest chance of success, his truth must reach the right ears. Will you be his liberator?”
“Wait,” I said. “I thought you said you were the Prophet.”
“I was, the last time around. But this story is over—this world is over—and the mantle is his to bear.” She paused. “Mine to bear, technically.”
“So you and Buddy…are the same person?”
She spread her hands. “What you’re seeing has already come to pass. I’m told we met in the prison yard. Will meet, for me. Met, for you. See? Time complicates things. Throw out your clocks. Learn to think sideways, while you’re liberating the Prophet’s voice.”
“Just to be clear on this: you’re asking me to bust Buddy out of prison?”
She nodded, grave. I took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll find a way. Somehow.”
“But understand this: by whimsy or spite, the Enemy has swept you up into his grand design. If you thwart his plans, he will come for you. Your death will not be a merciful one.”
“He’ll have to find me first,” I said. “I’ve got a little magic of my own.”
She chuckled at me.
“And there you fail. You see, your magic can only change what things are. His magic can change why things are.”
Thump.
The ground shook under our feet. A single, sharp jolt, and a booming sound that reverberated through the ruins. Then another.
Thump.
Cassandra sighed. She looked up to the shattered skyline.
“My final prophecy,” she said. “I always knew I was going to die today.”
Thump.
Then I glimpsed it. The shadow of a shape, just out of sight behind the leaning corpse of the Taipei Tower. The shape that slowly lurched forward, making the ground shiver with every thunderous step.
A shape at least thirty stories tall.
“Come on.” I tugged at Cassandra’s shoulder. “Come on, we have to run—”
“We?” Her voice was placid. Tired. Resigned. “I told you, this is my home, not yours. You’re not even really here. You’re just watching from afar. A voyeur at the end of the world next door.”
She pulled her shoulder away.
“Now go,” she said, turning her back on me. “I’m meant to die alone. We must all fulfill our part of the story. As we shall, again and again, until the last world dies and sets us free.”
* * *
I lay on the concrete floor of Buddy’s cell, flat on my back, head throbbing. Driblets of his foul concoction on my lips, the aftertaste coating my fuzzy tongue like a layer of paint. Empty plastic cup in my outstretched hand.
Buddy crouched over me, wide-eyed.
“I don’t remember how I got here,” I mumbled.
He offered me his hand. “The same way you left.”
I got to my feet, legs wobbly, and spat into the stainless-steel toilet. It didn’t help. Buddy took the cup from me and pressed a warm can of Coke into my hand. I popped the tab and chugged it down.
“Did she explain?” he asked.
I wiped my hand across the back of my mouth.
“Too damn little, but apparently you’ve got an important message to deliver.” I gave him the side-eye. “Do you, uh, know what the message is, and where it goes?”
“I will.” He tapped his ear. “The machinery of the universe will tell me. Radio Free Buddy is on the air, twenty-four seven.”
“I don’t suppose the ‘machinery of the universe’ has a plan for getting you out of here?”
He tilted his head, listening to voices I couldn’t hear. Then he nodded, smiling bright.
“Yes,” he said. “You.”
Everybody’s a comedian.
Bad enough I had to find my own way out of the Iceberg, but now I had a tagalong. A tagalong who might be vital to saving the world. A world that, just an hour ago, I didn’t even know was in danger.
That was assuming, of course, I could believe anything I’d just seen. Assuming that it wasn’t some elaborate hallucination caused by an overdose of bad prison wine. For that matter, “Cassandra” might have been more lucid than Buddy, but she didn’t seem much more sane.
Still, I couldn’t deny what had happened to me. Somebody had carved me out of my life and shoved me inside a prison, thanks to a mind hex that affected not only me but, well, everybody. There was power, and then there was power on a scale I’d never seen before. Cassandra’s claim that I’d been swapped out with “the Thief,” whoever the hell that was, made as much sense as any theory I could come up with on my own.
Didn’t explain why Fleiss wanted to take out a hit on me, but I’d solve one problem at a time.
Speaking of problems, my original plan—prove I never got a trial, post bail, and flee the country—had just gone down in flames. I could get myself out that way, but that’d mean leaving Buddy behind. There was only one way to save my skin and get Buddy where he needed to go.
A good old-fashioned prison break.
“Buddy,” I said, “you and me, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
* * *
Funny thing was, I was okay with it. Trouble had a way of sharpening my senses, putting me on top of my game. And I had plenty of trouble to keep me occupied.
As evening fell, I found myself shuffling along in the chow line, chewing over the problem. It was better than chewing the food. I was so wrapped up in plotting that I almost missed the change in temperature. I was still catching dagger-sharp glares from the Cinco Calles and their buddies, but now they weren’t the only ones. A few of the whites—some of Brisco’s guys and a handful of strangers—gave me the side-eye and dropped into low murmurs as I walked by.
Westie cleared a seat at the table for me, but he didn’t look up from his food.
“Tell me something good,” I said, setting my tray down beside his.
“All out of good news, friend. Brisco spent most of the afternoon in deep consultation with a gentleman of the Latin persuasion. Word is, talks didn’t go so well.”
“The Calles want me that bad?”
“Far as they’re concerned,” he said, “every day you’re breathin’ their air is an unforgivable insult. The Calles are having some kinda leadership shake-up on the outside. Raymundo is up for parole in a few months. He puts you on ice, that’s a feather in his cap once he rejoins his brethren in sunny Las Vegas.”
I dragged a plastic fork along a gray lump of mashed potatoes. I didn’t have much of an appetite.
“Makes sense,” I said. “Killing me, and getting away with it, will make him look like a guy who can get things done. Somebody who isn’t afraid to spill a little blood. What’s Brisco think?”
Westie shrugged. “Brisco doesn’t want a war. And his general course of action, when it comes to problems, is to do whatever makes said problem go away. As quietly as possible.”
“You think he’ll hand me over to the Calles?”
“Not a chance, friend. The prisoners who take this white-solidarity business seriously would skin him alive for it. But just because he’s not handing you over…”
He let the thought trail off.
“Doesn’t mean,” I said, “he won’t stand aside and let them take a shot at me. ‘Oops, sorry, they shanked him when we weren’t looking. It couldn’t be helped.’”
Westie twisted his lips into a bitter smile.
“Now you’re thinking right. Watch your arse, Dan. Raymundo will make a move on you, and soon—it’s not if, it’s when.”
When I’d finished choking down dinner, I fell in with a ragged crowd of men heading back to Hive C. All my shade of pale, most of them Brisco’s boys.
I’d never felt so alone in a crowd.
Back in my cell, I caught Paul up on current events. He sat on his bunk, a dog-eared paperback by Voltaire nestled in his lap, and sighed.
“You’ve got options,” he said, “but ultimately it comes down to a choice of evils. There’s voluntary segregation, for instance.”
“Voluntary?”
Paul nodded. “Sure. Any prisoner who feels threatened has the right to request voluntary segregation.”
“How’s that work?”
“You know Ad Seg? The hole? Solitary confinement? That’s where they stick you. Hell, you can do your whole sentence in solitary. Pros: you won’t get stabbed. Cons: you’ll probably go insane from the isolation.”
“Not an option,” I said. “What else have you got?”
“Kill him first? Not easy to pull off, considering Raymundo never rolls with less than three of his, er, ‘homies’ to play bodyguard, but you seem like a resourceful gentleman. Of course, then the banger who takes his place will have to kill you to avenge Raymundo, and so on down the line.” He wagged his paperback at me. “Vengeance is an endless cycle. Tragic, really.”
That idea had some merit. Not sure how I’d pull it off, though. I set it on the back burner.
“Of course,” Paul added, “you could also…not be here when the attack happens. Those questions you asked me about people breaking out of the Iceberg. Those weren’t hypothetical, were they?”
I caught the glint in his eye.
“Paul?” I asked. “By any chance, would you be interested in getting out of here?”
“Hmm.” He glanced at his bare wrist, as if checking an invisible watch. “Well, I’ve got nothing else to do for another…forty years or so. So yes, Daniel, yes I would.”
“Forty more years? Christ, what’d you do?”
Paul smirked. “Less than you did, according to your rap sheet. But to answer your question, I’m a bad, bad man. A bad, bad man who made the mistake of trusting a public defender with a heavy caseload. I may have committed a tiny little murder, but there are such things as mitigating circumstances, you know?”
“If we do this, you’ll be a fugitive for the rest of your life. You okay with that?”
He stretched his arms over his head and stifled a yawn.
“My wife divorced me. She’s made it clear I’ll never see my little girl again, and I’m pretty sure my tenure at the university’s been revoked by now. It’s not as if I have a whole lot from my old life to cling to. So. You have a plan?”
“I’m working on that,” I told him.
Later, I lay awake in my bunk, staring at the eggshell paint on the wall and listening to the restless sounds of the prison after dark. They were less jarring than the night before, and it was that much easier to close my eyes and slip, if not into sleep, into an uneasy waking dream.
The alien maggot inside my skull, the gift from the King of Worms, squirmed across the meat of my brain. I could see it when I closed my eyes, its black, rubbery skin still reflecting the light from distant stars. Its hunger growing.
14.
I dreamed of Caitlin.
It wasn’t a message, no mystic vision. Just a snatch of memory on repeat. Sitting at a plastic two-seater in the secret little pizza parlor at the Metropolitan, side by side, sharing Cokes and fat, greasy slices of pepperoni pizza. She flashed her smile my way and I felt…whole. Human. Warm inside.
Then I woke up to the clattering and shouts and stench of the cellblock. My new home. My new home for the rest of my life if I didn’t start making moves.
I joined the line for the showers, letting myself be herded like a cow, hating how fast it became routine. Brisco’s boys, Ray-Ray and Slanger, fell in on my left and right. I gave Ray-Ray a nod.
“Brisco wants us to cover you while you shower,” he told me. “In case the Calles get stupid. Just do t
he same for us, okay?”
“Good deal,” I said.
I stripped down, setting my folded clothes on a long wooden bench, and stepped into the narrow shower stall. The curtain hung short, and even with it pulled closed I could see my new bodyguards’ feet outside, standing watch for me. For five minutes, at least, I could exhale and let my guard down.
I didn’t, though.
Something was off. As the lukewarm water splashed across the stubble on my scalp and rolled down my naked back, I stretched out my psychic tendrils. A mind here, a mind there. Snatches of confusion, of sudden anxiety, adrenaline spiking.
Fewer minds than there should have been. And the ones I could touch were leaving.
I turned around in the stall and looked down to the curtain gap. Ray-Ray and Slanger were gone.
Here it comes, then, I thought.
In the moments before a confrontation—when you know it’s going to be genuine kill-or-be-killed violence, no discussion, no debate—the world slows to a crawl. Time turns into an hourglass filled with molasses, the seconds dripping down one leaden echoing heartbeat at a time. Your vision narrows, the walls closing in around you.
I took a deep breath, living in that silent, eternal moment.
Then the curtain ripped open, and everything happened very, very fast.
He was shorter than me, Asian, cropped black hair, but my eyes were on his knife. Not prison junk. Carbon black steel, spec-ops style, and forged to carve skin like butter.
Pro, said the back of my brain while the rest of me went into overdrive, dodging to one side as he lunged at me. The blade stabbed empty air, one inch from my left shoulder. I grabbed his wrist, twisted, shoved him a step backward, and slammed his arm against the shower stall opening as hard as I could. His forearm met the white tile with a shotgun crack as a bone fractured. He grunted through gritted teeth, but he clung to the knife with a death grip.
He had a buddy with a blade of his own, dancing around outside the stall like a prizefighter waiting for his title shot. The stall was too small, and they could only come at me one at a time. My only edge. That, and the weapon they didn’t know I had.
The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5) Page 8
