“Prince Sitri wants to meet you.”
• • •
It wasn’t every day that I was summoned to an audience with a creature older than Rome, who could probably burn me to ashes just by thinking about it. I wore my nice jacket and a deep purple tie.
Winter didn’t look much like a nightclub from the outside. It was nestled between tourist traps on the north end of the Strip with only a small brass sign and a slim blue neon arrow to point the way down a short flight of steps to the door. There was a line out front every night of the week, though, snaking down the block and around the corner. I’d never been there. I wasn’t much for nightclubs, and besides, I knew who owned this one.
Caitlin met me at the sidewalk, dressed to kill in a black dress with one flared lace shoulder. She pulled me into an embrace that nearly lifted me off my feet.
“Aren’t you excited?” she said, beaming.
More like scared shitless, but I put on my best smile for her.
“I’d feel better if I knew what this was about,” I said as she took my arm and led me past the line, up to a pair of bouncers in wraparound shades.
“Isn’t it obvious? That whole business with the Etruscan Box. You stopped Lauren from opening it, you saved the day, and more importantly, you saved my prince. He wants to commend you. Perhaps even reward you.”
I could do without getting any presents from a demon prince. There was no such thing as “no strings attached” in Sitri’s world. Still, I stayed close to Caitlin as the bouncers lifted the velvet rope for us without a word. Beyond the black doors, a whirlwind of light and teeth-rattling bass washed over us. Ice white and sapphire blue were the colors of the night, while fractals in emerald and gold exploded over wall-mounted LCD displays. Even without the crowd, churning and writhing under the hot lights, it would have been pure sensory overload.
We walked down a broad, curving staircase. Below, a bar coated in onyx tiles curved around the packed dance floor. Caitlin said something I couldn’t hear, and I leaned closer.
“—DJ just got back from a tour in Japan!” she shouted. “We poached him from the Regal!”
I bobbed my head, my feet moving to the beat despite my curmudgeonly efforts to resist. Caitlin led me down a side corridor lit in cool blue, the colors gradually growing thicker, darker, as we turned one corner and then another. As the throbbing beat grew fainter, the chaos slipping away, a cold and sterile order took hold. The back of my neck tensed.
Bathed in blue light, a man in a full-face gas mask and black leather overalls stood by a steel door at the end of the hall. I couldn’t make out his eyes behind the tinted lenses. He held as still as a statue. The wash of color mirrored the light show sparking in my psychic senses. The entire club was steeped in magical radiation, thick and dark.
“He’s my guest,” Caitlin told the man, nodding at me.
He turned toward a keypad discreetly set into the wall. That was when I noticed the machete dangling from his belt, flecked with what I hoped was dry rust. Caitlin reached out, her arm fast as a biting snake, and grabbed him by the chin of his mask. She forced his head toward me.
“Mark his face,” she told him. “He has the liberty of this place, should he ever come without me. If you forget, I shall be irritated.”
She let him go. The man let out a raspy groan behind the mask, murmuring words I couldn’t make out, and bowed his head as he keyed in a six-digit combination. The metal door rattled, then slid open. Caitlin smiled merrily and took my hand. Together we descended into the depths of Winter.
Six
The club under the club swam in a sea of black—black velvet and black leather—lit here and there by golden sprays of neon. The builders had designed it for maximum shadow, and the music—now just a faint echo from above, nothing but the steady thump-thump-thump of the nightclub’s heartbeat—made me feel like I could have been a million miles underground. I thought of a beehive. Not one large room but chamber after chamber, hiving off from the gallery hall, stretching who knew how far into the darkness.
The crack of a whip and a shrill, sharp cry set my teeth on edge. My gaze darted left and right, the acoustics impossible to track in these honeycombed rooms, and Caitlin rested her hand on the small of my back.
“Be at ease, my knight in tarnished armor,” she said. “No one is being hurt here. Not anyone who doesn’t desire it, at any rate. Just a playground, nothing more.”
“Well now, this is a pleasant surprise.” Emma emerged from the darkness. Backlit in gold, she wore a laced leather corset that ended in a flowing silk skirt. Golden bangles matching the color of the neon light adorned one arm. Something told me, given how pleased with herself she looked, that she was anything but surprised.
“We’ve been summoned to the Conduit,” Caitlin said, curling her arm around my waist. “We.”
“Oh,” Emma said. “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing too terrible. Come find me when you’re done? I’m doing a corset-piercing demonstration, and I’d love volunteers.”
Caitlin tapped her bottom lip with her fingernail. “Why don’t you use April? Oh, right, she was on Isaac’s leash, last time I saw her.”
Emma’s hands clenched at her sides.
“She what?”
“Oh, mm-hmm,” Caitlin said, nodding innocently. “I just saw the two of them around here somewhere. She was wearing his collar. Looked deliriously happy.”
“I—” Emma started to say, then shook her head. “I will kill him. I will kill him.”
Caitlin gave a little wave as Emma stomped off into the honeycomb maze. “Ta, dear. Do say hello for me.”
I blurted out a laugh and pulled her close. A spark stung my lips as we kissed. I tasted the faint flavor of strawberries.
“She hates it when people play with her toys,” Caitlin murmured into my ear, stroking the back of my neck with her fingernails.
“You are so—” I paused. I was going to say “evil.” I meant it as a dry compliment, but the word brought me flying a little close to the reality I tried not to spend too much time thinking about.
When dating an agent of hell, moral issues got a little fuzzy around the edges. Caitlin was the love of my life. She was smart, charming, kind when she wanted to be…and if her people got their way, humanity as we knew it would be doomed. So we joked around it. We left the heavy stuff in the corner and met in the middle, in that shadowy gray ground we both knew so well.
I was no angel myself, after all, but sometimes I wondered just how far this relationship could go. I thought I was hoping she would change. I thought she was hoping I would. We were stubborn that way.
“What were you going to say?” she said, pulling back to look in my eyes.
“Beautiful,” I told her, and we kissed one more time.
The door at the end of the gallery didn’t have a guard. Just another keypad, its numbers glowing a serene blue. I watched as she tapped in the code.
“Six-six-six?” I tilted my head at her as the door slid wide, revealing another stairwell. “Seriously?”
“It’s a joke,” she said, mock-pouting at me. “Anyone who goes downstairs and doesn’t belong there won’t ever be coming back up again, so we’re not exactly worried about intruders.”
That thought did little to reassure me as we descended the stairs. The air down here was humid, musty, carrying the faint, strange scent of spiced and dried oranges. Four pillars of stone held up the ceiling, and a single candlestick made of serpent-scaled brass, about four feet tall, stood in the heart of the chamber. Someone had already come down before us to light the pillar candle, but it barely shed enough light to see the outer walls of the room or much of anything beyond the thick, shivering shadows.
At the foot of the stairs, Caitlin took my hand. Her fingers curled around mine, warm and firm, as she looked in my eyes.
“You’re nervous,” she said. “That’s understandable. Whatever happens here, Daniel, I will keep you safe.”
There was something else. I could
tell when she was holding back.
“What is it?” I said.
“I want you,” she said, frowning, like a foreigner who had reached the limits of her English and couldn’t quite find the right words. “Do you understand? I…I want you.”
I reached out and touched her cheek.
“I love you too,” I said for the first time.
She pulled me into her arms, and we both pretended it was too dark to see the wetness in each other’s eyes.
Chains rattled in the darkness. Caitlin pulled away, letting go. “It’s coming,” she whispered.
First came the stench. It smelled like day-old roadkill on a summer highway, a maggot-pregnant corpse rotting in the heat. My stomach clenched in sudden revolt. Then, one slow limping footstep at a time, the Conduit shambled out of the shadows.
Whatever—whoever—it had once been, the hands of hell had twisted the man into something that turned my bladder to ice. The Conduit’s face was a mass of old burns, its eyes buried under scar tissue and his features obliterated save for its untouched mouth. Skeletally thin, it wore long robes of emerald silk that trailed behind it, finely tailored but caked with dried excrement. Chains trailed behind it as well, thick trails of solid gold that dragged on the flagstone floor.
They hadn’t shackled it. They’d cut out the middleman and simply pierced the bones of its frail wrists and ankles with the chains’ final links.
“Fear me,” the Conduit rasped in a reedy voice. “For I only speak the truth.”
“Why should we fear the truth?” I asked.
“Spoken,” it said, his sightless head swiveling my way, “like someone who doesn’t hear it very often.”
“We would hear the prince’s words,” Caitlin said. She held her hands out before her, palms up and fingers curled oddly, then lowered them again. A ritual gesture in an unfamiliar faith.
“And he would have you hear them. Daniel Faust, you are known to our prince.”
Caitlin took my hand. I nodded.
“He names you,” the Conduit said, “his enemy.”
Her fingers clenched.
“Excuse me?” I said. Not the most eloquent response, but I’d just been delivered a punch in the gut when I was expecting a box of chocolates.
The Conduit paused, its head tilted, listening to a voice we couldn’t hear.
“You have worked against us in the past,” the Conduit rasped. “Performed exorcisms for coin. Banished the prince’s lesser minions in the service of your personal greed.”
I shook my head. “Maybe you aren’t up on current events, pal, but I just saved your boss’s ass and the throne that ass sits in—”
“Daniel,” Caitlin said, a warning edge in her voice.
The Conduit let out a slithering, hissing cough. It took me a second to realize the creature was chuckling.
“Your service is noted, Daniel Faust, but it does not outweigh your insults, intended or not. You are not an appropriate companion for the prince’s hound. It would lead to speculations. Questions. Loose speech and whispers of disloyalty.”
“No.” Caitlin squeezed my hand hard enough to make my eyes water. Her voice was raw, straining with a fury barely under control. “No. My loyalty is unquestionable. My loyalty has been proven time and time again, as has my service. I have earned the right to choose my own consort. I have earned it with blood, and with tears, and with—”
The Conduit held up one hand, its chains rattling.
“And your prince recognizes your hard work, and he will happily reward you with your choice of gifts. But not this one. You are henceforth forbidden to associate with this man. Unless…unless the Faust were to perform a service for us. A proof of faithfulness, to show his good intentions.”
I’d been down this road before. Cops, gangsters, or the lords of hell, it’s always the same song and dance. “Do my dirty work, or I’ll take away everything you care about.” I was getting pretty goddamned sick of this game, but with Caitlin in the balance there was only one way to play it.
“Name it,” I snapped.
“There is a local priest,” the Conduit said, “named Maximilian Alvarez. A recent transplant to his new parish, he is already beloved by his congregation and by all accounts a good and noble man. The prince would like you to murder him.”
“What’s he done?”
The Conduit smiled. “Nothing. Nothing at all. He is the model of an innocent soul. Nonetheless, for reasons of his own, Prince Sitri would like this man dead. And he would like you to do it. Don’t ask why. Just kill the priest.”
“I’m nobody’s hit man,” I said. “And I’ve never pulled the trigger on anybody without a damn good reason.”
The Conduit’s mutilated face turned from me to Caitlin and back again.
“Kill this man,” it said, “and the two of you can be together. Is that not a good enough reason?”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
Caitlin let go of my hand. It fell and hung there, limp and useless at my side. I didn’t have the strength to curl it into a fist.
“I only speak the truth,” the Conduit said and stepped back into the darkness. The shadows swallowed it whole, leaving nothing but the fading stench of roadkill and the distant rattling of golden chains.
I knew someday Caitlin and I might hit a breaking point, something that was an inch too far for one of us to take. I just didn’t think it’d be tonight. I wasn’t one of the good guys. I’d stolen, lied, swindled, and yeah, I’d left a few cold bodies in my wake, but there were things I’d do and things I wouldn’t. It wasn’t a code of honor, nothing so romantic, just some basic rules that kept what was left of my tattered conscience from eating me alive. I’d never killed anyone who didn’t have it coming, and I wasn’t starting tonight.
She knew it, too. Caitlin stared into the candle’s flickering flame, looking lost. We grappled for words, but she was the first to finally speak.
“He’s making a point,” she said.
“He’s full of shit, is what he is.” She glared at me, but I didn’t care. I was too angry to play nice. “He’s fucking with us, Cait. Making us dance like puppets just because he can. Now me? I expect that shit, but you deserve better. You work your fingers to the fucking bone for that asshole, and you deserve better.”
“Daniel,” she said softly, “if my prince gave me the order, to slay that priest, do you know what I would say?”
I shook my head.
“I would ask how painful the death should be, and how the corpse should be displayed. I don’t care that he’s innocent. When it’s a matter of serving my prince, my court, my people, I simply. Do. Not. Care. That’s who I am. You do care. You’re a crusader at heart, much as you try to bury it in bitterness, and your wrath is reserved for the deserving. You could push yourself to do this thing, for our sake, but you’d hate yourself afterward and always. That’s who you are. He’s making a point.”
She turned and walked up the staircase, leaving the lonely candle behind.
Seven
I followed her, fumbling for words. “Let me sleep on it,” I told her. It was the best I could do, the best thing I could come up with that wasn’t a bald-faced lie.
She walked through the black labyrinth like a mourner. Cries of pleasure and pain echoed from the honeycombed chambers, chased by faint laughter.
“Will tomorrow make a difference, Daniel? And if you do gather the nerve to do this thing, what then? How long before you resent me for it? How long before you hate me?”
“Caitlin!” I snapped, my voice like a gunshot in the dark. She stopped in her tracks, whirling to face me.
“Give me three days,” I told her. “Please. Before you toss flowers on our casket. Three days.”
She shook her head but didn’t turn away.
“Are you thinking you’re going to find an angle? Outsmart my prince somehow? You’re a born trickster, Daniel, but he was pulling strings centuries before you were born. He plans for everything. Whatever gam
e you intend to play, he’s already won.”
“Funny,” I said. “Right before he died, Tony Vance told me the exact same thing about Lauren Carmichael. And as I recall, we kicked her ass. Together.”
Caitlin gave me the ghost of a smile.
“Three days,” she said, pointing up the corridor. “Now go. The exit’s that way. Call me when you’ve done…whatever it is you think you’re going to do.”
“You’re not coming? I can give you a ride home.”
She shook her head. “I need to hurt someone tonight. I’d rather it not be you.”
I didn’t leave right away. Honestly, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I found an empty alcove with a padded leather bench and sat down, resting my head against the wall, bathed in the golden neon light.
I’d bought three days, but what was I going to do with them? This wasn’t a multiple-choice quiz. I could either kill the priest and keep my relationship intact, or keep my integrity and lose Caitlin. Heads you win, tails I lose, I thought, closing my eyes.
Why a priest? Of all the random people to put on a hit list, why would Prince Sitri think I cared if the target wore a white collar? He’d have to know I wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with any religion’s god. There was no added layer of taboo for me. Sitri could have picked somebody a lot harder for me to knock off if he really wanted a test of my determination. A volunteer at a pet shelter, maybe. Hell, if he wanted to make the “test” really impossible, he could have ordered me to kill a friend of mine.
The answer was easy: the target wasn’t random at all.
Sitri liked games. This Father Alvarez wasn’t some arbitrary chump picked from the phone book. He’d singled him out for a reason, dropped him in my gunsights even though he knew I wouldn’t pull the trigger. Figuring out why, that was my angle of attack. It was the only angle I had.
“All right, asshole,” I murmured. “I’ll play. Game on.”
I was almost out the door when Emma found me. Her silken skirt fluttered behind her as she stormed over and jabbed her finger in my face.
“What the hell happened down there?” she snapped.
Redemption Song (Daniel Faust) Page 4
