Redemption Song (Daniel Faust)

by Craig Schaefer

  That was the key. I hadn’t fallen on my face because I disobeyed Sitri’s command. I fell on my face because I was playing the wrong game. And how many times had I been told that Sitri loved games? The solution was in my face the entire time.

  You don’t want blind obedience, I thought. That wasn’t the point in the first place. You knew I wouldn’t kill Alvarez. It was never even on the table. No, you want a challenger. You want someone to surprise you for a change.

  I waved down a taxi.

  The crowds at Winter churned like one beast with three hundred minds, writhing under the icy strobes. I cut through them, a laser-guided knife aimed for the back corridor. At the end of the line, the leather-draped guard made no motion to open the door for me.

  “The hound,” he hissed, his voice muffled and rattling behind his gas mask, “has rescinded your invitation.”

  His beefy hand lingered near the machete dangling on his belt. I squared my stance and stared hard into the opaque lenses of his mask.

  “I want you to listen very carefully,” I said, “and understand what I’m about to tell you. Over the past two nights I have been swung at, shot at, nearly burned to death, and whipped with a cane. I have lost everything I own, my relationship is falling to pieces, and I may have gotten an innocent priest killed. I am tired, I am aching, and I am well beyond the point of taking shit from anyone.”

  The guard stood frozen, his breathing slow and labored behind the mask.

  “You are standing,” I told him, “between me and my chance, my only chance, to get my life back. So I want you to ask yourself a question, and I want you to look me in the eyes when you do it. Do you know my name? Because I am Daniel fucking Faust, and you should know what happens to people who stand in my way.”

  The guard hesitated for a moment. Then he unlocked the door and stood aside.

  “Thank you,” I said and made my way downstairs.

  I wound through the black and gold galleries, impervious to the howls of pain and pleasure from the galleries around me. I had one goal, one destination: the door to the Conduit’s lair. I hesitated only for a second with my fingers over the keypad, remembering Caitlin’s explanation of the joke. Anyone who goes downstairs and doesn’t belong there won’t ever be coming back up again, so we’re not worried about intruders.

  This was the definition of laying all my chips on the table. I tapped in the code, 6-6-6. The stairwell beyond the door yawned down into darkness.

  As I descended the steps, candles in stone niches and on mismatched pillars ignited in my wake. I stood in the heart of the chamber, breathing in the scent of spiced and dried oranges, and waited.

  The Conduit emerged from the shadows, his chains and piercings rattling, wheezing as it dragged his filth-stained robes and desiccated limbs across the cold stone floor. Even without eyes, its head swiveled to mark where I stood.

  “Fear me,” it rasped, “for I only speak the—”

  “I want to talk to Sitri.”

  It hesitated.

  “Yes, I will carry his words to you.”

  “No,” I said. “I want to talk to Sitri. No go-betweens, no playing telephone. Just the man himself.”

  “You blaspheme,” hissed the Conduit, somehow looming larger. A few of the candles at my back flickered and died. I instinctively knew that being alone in the dark with the Conduit would a very, very bad thing.

  “I’m a businessman. This is business.”

  “You have no business with the prince of the Court of Jade Tears, human. You have no business in this holy chamber at all!”

  More candles died, their flames sparking and sizzling out. The shadows grew longer, darker, colder. Hungrier.

  I took a step closer. “I’ll give you two words to pass on to him. Two words that’ll prove you wrong, because once I speak them, he will want to talk to me.”

  The Conduit bared yellowed, rotting teeth in a snarl. “What could you possibly say that would summon Prince Sitri’s attention? My master is a creature beyond time, beyond life and death! What two words would he wish to hear from an insignificant ant like you?”

  My pride didn’t even sting when I said it.

  “You win.”

  The Conduit slumped like a puppet with its strings cut, its head bowed and back bent. Slowly it rose once more, spreading its withered hands and pierced wrists, but a new voice emerged from its lips. A voice that sounded like smoky kisses in the dark, like the smell of sex and broken promises.

  “You are a rare pleasure, Daniel Faust. A rare pleasure, but mistaken. This game is far from over.”

  I nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I’m ready to make my next move.”

  “I smell a gambit in the air.” The prince’s voice dripped with delight. “Very well, sorcerer. The board is yours. Impress me.”

  That was when I spoke the six most dangerous words you can say to a demon.

  “I want to make a deal.”

  Twenty-Three

  Sitri and me, we talked.

  Bentley and Corman were both asleep when I got back to their apartment above the Scrivener’s Nook. I was glad. I didn’t want to explain myself. My head was heavy with the talk I’d had with Sitri, with the deal I’d made and metaphorically signed in blood, what I’d given him and what he’d given me in return. I dragged my dread behind me like the Conduit’s golden chains, feeling the weight.

  Still, as I lay back on the sofa and stared up at the peeling plaster, I felt an emotion I hadn’t known in days. Hope.

  I let myself sleep until dawn, then I took a quick shower and darted out the door before Bentley or Corman woke up. I had a lot of work to do.

  My first stop took me to the outskirts of the city, down in the shadow of an overpass where the air smelled like diesel fumes and mastiffs snarled behind a barbed-wire fence. The Sunset Garage hadn’t changed much since the 1950s. It even had the same neon-rimmed sign up on a soot-stained pillar, showing a gleaming green Studebaker in the sun, but the neon had burned out years ago and nobody had bothered to replace it.

  I let myself in through the open service bay. One car sat up on the lifters, a rust-eaten Chevy Nova missing most of its guts, but otherwise the garage catered strictly to two-wheelers.

  “In the back!” called out a weathered voice. I followed it to the source. Winslow bent over a workbench like a modern alchemist, studying a bowl of molten gold as he smelted it down. He was built like a lumberjack past his prime, with tangled gray hair and sun-blistered skin. He didn’t bother with a shirt, but he’d slung on a black leather vest, the back patched with the insignia of a skeletal eagle hovering over a roaring Harley. The eagle’s claws loomed, outstretched for the kill.

  “Charley swore this was 24-karat,” he muttered. “He might know meth purity, but he doesn’t know shit about gold.”

  “Bad time?” I asked. He looked up and waved me over.

  “Oh, hey, Faust. No, c’mon in. Jenny with you?”

  “Just me,” I said. Jennifer had introduced us a few months back when he needed my kind of help. They had business together, but I wasn’t sure if Winslow was one of her distributors or just an enthusiastic customer. Probably the former. There wasn’t much you couldn’t buy at the Sunset Garage, once the right people vouched for you. “Getting into making jewelry?”

  He laughed and showed me the pewter pendant around his neck, a coiled and rearing cobra. “Son, I been into it longer than I been into anything else. Good hobby for a mechanic. Keeps your fingers limber. I ain’t winnin’ no contests, but then, I ain’t enterin’ any either. What brings you by?”

  “Business, with a twist.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “What kind of business?”

  “I need wheels and a gun.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought you weren’t keen on guns?”

  “I’m not, but I’ve got troubles with some folks who are keen on guns, and I don’t think I can fight back with strongly worded arguments.”

  “Reckon not. All righ
t, what’s the twist?”

  “I’m a little short on cash. As in, I don’t have any.”

  Winslow pointed toward the bay doors.

  “There’s the exit,” he said. “Directions are free.”

  “C’mon, Winslow. You know I’m good for it. I’ve got a line on a big score.”

  That wasn’t entirely a lie. Given my cash situation, I would need to find a big score pretty damn quick once the current crisis was over and done with. Saying I’d already found one was technically just confidence talking.

  “I don’t do credit, kid. Bad business. You start making handouts in my line of work, people think you’re soft. Then they start taking instead of asking.”

  “And I can keep my mouth shut. Besides, I was hoping, given what I did for your sister…”

  I let that hang in the air. He sighed. Then he narrowed his eyes. I could see his brain working, sniffing for an advantage.

  “Jenny says you might be going inside for a little while.”

  “Maybe. Soft time. Cops got me on a bullshit beef for threatening somebody in traffic. I’m out on bail, don’t even have a trial date yet. What about it?”

  “I got a buddy inside right now. Friend of the MC. Needs a little help. Your kind of help.”

  I had a sinking feeling. Outlaw biker gangs are a little outside my usual crowd, and I wasn’t sure what kind of occult “help” Winslow’s pal could possibly need behind bars.

  “Maybe I’m going inside,” I said. “I might walk on the whole thing. Remains to be seen.”

  “Well, here’s my proposition. I’ll bend the rules and get you what you need today, just this once. But you owe me double what I’d normally charge, and I damn well better get paid by month’s end, or you and me are gonna have harsh words. That’s if you don’t go inside. If you do, and if you can help my buddy? Then we’re square.”

  I winced at “double.” Winslow’s services already weren’t cheap, and he wasn’t kidding about the implied threat. Not even being a friend of Jennifer’s was going to save my kneecaps if I didn’t pay him back to the last penny. Then again, I didn’t have a whole lot of choices right now.

  I offered him my hand. He took it in a hard grip and shook it in a way that left no doubt the deal was sealed.

  “First things first,” he said, sliding back a tarp on the floor and pulling on a knotted rope attached to a trap door. I followed him down into the cellar. Wire mesh lined the cinder-block walls, adorned with enough firepower to outfit an army platoon and then some. Under the light of a dangling bulb, I took in the sights. Winslow stocked pistols, shotguns, and rifles, and propped up in the corner of the cellar was, I was pretty sure, a vintage World War II flamethrower.

  “What size bear are you hunting?” he asked.

  “I need something with serious stopping power. If I have to pull this thing, it’ll mostly be for the intimidation factor, to buy me some time. Anyone who’s still dumb enough to run up on me needs to go down hard as a lesson to his friends. On the other hand, it’s got to be small enough to fit in a duffel bag or a briefcase. I can’t be toting an assault rifle around town.”

  Winslow rubbed his chin. Then he nodded.

  “I’ve got just the thing. You’re gonna like this.”

  He searched the wire rack and took down a fat monster of a revolver, matte black with a scarlet backstrap along the grip.

  “Here comes the Judge,” he said with a grin. “Taurus Judge Magnum. Six-and-a-half-inch barrel, six-round cylinder, chambered to fire .454 Casull cartridges and, here’s the fun part, .410 bore shotshells.”

  I took it from him, feeling the weight, the coldness of the grip.

  “Shotshells,” I said. “As in shotgun shells?”

  “That’s right. You don’t want to get in any long-range shenanigans with this baby, but if someone gets up in your face? One pull and you’ll take their face off. Plus it’s one ugly, mean-lookin’ mama.”

  One thing for certain, the gun had the intimidation part down pat. It still wouldn’t stop Sullivan, but if I shot him right between the eyes, the sting might slow him down long enough for me to do something useful.

  “I’ll take it. Got something I can toss this into?”

  He gave me a black Nike gym bag and stocked it with ammo, padding it with crumpled newspaper so it didn’t sound like an arsenal rattling around in there. Then we went upstairs to do the paperwork. Once he finished, I found myself the proud owner of a clean, legal firearm, courtesy of a nonexistent (but very friendly) South Texas gun-shop owner. I even had a cash receipt.

  “This here’s your blue card,” Winslow told me. “Says your gun’s registered in Clark County. Of course it ain’t, so don’t let any legal beagle dig too deep into it. Anywhere else in the state, you’re golden as long as you’re carrying open. You should have your boy Paolo do you up a bogus concealed-carry permit if you wanna cover all your bases.”

  “You’re the man, Winslow.”

  “Just don’t blow your damn foot off. I’d feel bad. C’mon, let’s see what we’ve got out back. I’m assuming you’re gonna want a cage?”

  “A…like a roll cage?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Like a safe little four-wheeled box you sit in, instead of feeling the wind in your face like a real man. I don’t see you on a chopper, is what I’m saying.”

  “I don’t even know how to ride one,” I said, following him out the back door and into the fenced-in lot. The rocky gulch behind the garage was a graveyard where the sun-bleached corpses of dead cars waited to have their last useful parts stripped.

  “This here’s my surprised face.” Winslow’s expression didn’t change. “So how many heads are you huntin’, anyway?”

  “Who said anything about hunting heads?”

  “You come in needing wheels and firepower. You got no money, but neither one can wait. You want a piece that’ll hold off a small army while you get your business done, and you’ve got a certain look in your eye. I’ve seen that look on other men before. You know what it says?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you’ve got some blood to spill. And there ain’t nobody on God’s green earth gonna stop you from spilling it.”

  I nodded.

  “Sounds about right,” I said.

  “I’ve been doing a little restoration project,” Winslow said, leading me between the wrecks. “Now that it’s done, I been wanting to sell her, but…not to just anybody. A man’s ride is part of who he is. It should say something. Send a message before you even shake his hand.”

  We stopped in front of a green oilcloth tarp shrouding a car’s low-slung angles. Winslow took hold of the tarp and yanked it free, letting it flutter to the oil-stained pavement.

  The car beneath was sharp, hard, and blacker than a moonless summer night. Vintage Detroit steel, with a widemouthed grill and a long, sleek hood. It was the kind of car that hung out in back alleys looking for a knife fight.

  “A Barracuda?” I said.

  “Hemi ‘Cuda,” Winslow said. “Four hundred and twenty-five horsepower. Take you zero to sixty in six seconds, and she’ll pull a fourteen-second quarter-mile. The body and engine’s a 1970 original, rebuilt from a wreck. Transmission, brakes, tires are all new. You could drive this baby through the gates of hell and right back out again.”

  “Funny,” I said, “that’s almost what I have in mind.”

  He tossed me the keys.

  Twenty-Four

  The air changed around Richfield, and that was when I knew they were onto me.

  I’d headed out of town on I-15 North with the Barracuda’s engine purring and the duffel bag on the passenger seat. The car felt like a caged panther, flexing its sleek muscles and aching to sprint. I crossed the border into Utah, driving through St. George and Cedar City, the desert slowly giving way to scrub pine and towering rocks. I kept my eyes on the road.

  About three hours out of Vegas, I merged onto I-70 heading east toward Denver. I felt strange, long before I hit the bord
er. At first I chalked it up to a shift in elevation or temperature, making my ears feel stuffy and my nerves off-kilter, but that wasn’t all of it. The air tasted different. I felt like an astronaut, taking off my helmet on a planet with an atmosphere almost, but not quite identical to the one I came from.

  It was three in the afternoon by the time I rolled into Richfield. My stomach and the Barracuda’s tank both edged on empty. The town couldn’t have been any more middle-American, a sleepy burg in the middle of Utah surrounded by farms and factories, about a hundred miles from anywhere in particular. I fed the car first, rolling into a gas station that hadn’t changed its look since 1955. I asked the attendant to recommend something that would stick to my ribs. He pointed me toward Norma’s, a corner diner about two blocks away.

  A little chime jingled over the door as I walked into the diner with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. It was that twilight hour between lunch and dinner, so the place was far from crowded. Judging from the parking lot, I figured most of the patrons were long-haul truckers, grabbing a bite when and where they could. A girl with an acne-spotted face and a sunflower yellow dress, looking sixteen or seventeen, gave me a wave from the counter.

  “Welcome to Norma’s! Sit wherever you like. I’ll be over in just a minute.”

  I made myself comfortable in a booth by the window and sat the duffel bag next to me with the zipper in easy reach. A laminated menu lay on the Formica table. I flipped through it until the girl came over with a pot of black coffee.

  “Just what I needed,” I said, sliding over my empty mug. “Guy at the filling station said this place is world-famous for its pancakes. That right?”

  The girl smiled. “Don’t know if they’re talking about us in Paris, but the food’s good and we serve breakfast all day long.”

  “Good enough for me. I’ll have a full stack with a side of sausage, please.”

  I nursed my coffee and watched out the window, not sure how nervous I needed to be. The heart of Utah was a long way from anything I called home.

  The pancakes came out piping hot and dripping with butter. I drizzled fresh maple syrup over the fluffy stack and dug in. Bliss. After hours on the road, a gourmet meal served by a team of celebrity chefs wouldn’t have tasted better. The sausage links were plump and juicy with a sheen of grease.