Redemption Song (12 page)

“Yeah? Then why not put a bullet in me right now?”

“That, I will tell you,” Sullivan said with a smile. “I have unfinished business with your ‘Caitlin.’ You’re going to help me destroy her. The one noble act of your misspent life. It might even be enough to earn your salvation, though I honestly doubt it.”

As the limo turned towards faint lights in the distance, I looked for a way out. So far, I wasn’t finding one.

A Spanish mission waited at the end of the line. Its crumbling adobe walls stood against time and the barren desert. A bell rang out as we pulled through the wrought-iron front gates, chiming from a tower high in the old central villa. A ragged handful of men and women came out to greet us. They closed and locked the gate behind the limo. Most of them carried guns.

Rough hands hauled me out of the car and slammed me against the hood. They kept my arms pinned behind my back as they rifled my pockets, taking my wallet, my phone, and my deck of cards. Alvarez got the kid-glove treatment. One of the cambion patted him down gently, just to be safe, but he did it with an apology on his lips.

“You don’t actually think,” I said, “that I’m going to help you hurt Caitlin.”

Sullivan tapped the tip of his walking stick against the dusty asphalt. “I don’t plan on giving you a choice in the matter. This is a kindness, really. Eventually, she’d betray you, just as she betrayed me. That’s what whores do.”

The limo driver had my arms pinned, but that didn’t stop me from lifting my shoe and smashing it down on the arch of his foot. He yelped, his grip slipping, and that was all I needed to get loose and charge at Sullivan, cocking a fist.

Stupid move. I didn’t even see it coming. He stepped to one side, graceful as a falling leaf, and the mahogany stick lashed out with the speed of a bullwhip. It hit me across the stomach, and the air gusted from my lungs. I stumbled. He whipped the stick around and into the back of my knees, sending me tumbling into the dust.

He wasn’t done with me yet. Every whistling slash of the stick was a precision blow, eye-watering agony and scarlet welts blossoming in their wake. He said something, but I couldn’t hear it, couldn’t do much of anything but writhe on the ground, cover my head with my arms, and try to escape the relentless beating.

It finally stopped. Alvarez had Sullivan by the wrist. Sullivan could have torn him limb from limb, but he lowered his hand, gentle as a lamb.

“Please,” Alvarez said. “Don’t.”

Sullivan nodded. “Apologies, Father. I…have a bit of a temper. You were right to rebuke me. Gentlemen, please escort
that
to a holding cell.”

I spat blood into the dust. It tasted like tarnished pennies. A couple of Sullivan’s goons hauled me to my feet, and I didn’t have the strength to argue.

“Father,” I wheezed. “Don’t tell these bastards anything. They are
not
your friends—”

Sullivan rolled his eyes. “Please, Mr. Faust. Have the dignity to know when you’ve been defeated. Now come along, Father. I’d like to give you a tour. Our facilities are humble, but I think you’ll be impressed…”

• • •

I wasn’t sure who I was angrier at, Sullivan or myself. Losing my temper and giving him the bum-rush was a stupid, stupid move. I knew what Caitlin was capable of in a fight. I should have known Sullivan would be just as dangerous.

Sullivan’s goons tossed me in a dusty storage room with a thick oak door and a high barred window too small for a toddler to squeeze through. I lay on the cold flagstone floor, listening to the squeal of rats in the dark and drowning in a dull, throbbing ache. Sullivan had intended on inflicting pain, not damage. Nothing was broken. I’d just be feeling the aftermath of the beating for days, wearing the red stripes he’d painted across my skin. That, and seeing his gloating face in my mind’s eye.

I’m not sure how I slept, but I did. I woke from fitful dreams to a world of fresh pain and groaned as I forced myself to sit up. With the light of dawn streaming through the barred window, at least I could see where they’d left me to rot. An antique standing mirror with an oblong brass frame gathered dust in one corner, across from a jumble of wooden packing crates probably forgotten about back when this place was still a mission. A quick peek confirmed my suspicions and the stench of mildew wrinkled my nose. The crates were packed with brown monks’ robes, the burlap-like fabric long since disintegrated to uselessness.

Not much to go on. I thought about an impromptu ritual, but seeing as my captors hadn’t bound and gagged me—a basic precaution, when you’ve got a sorcerer on your hands—I had to figure Sullivan would be sniffing for stray magical energy on his home turf. They’d be on me before I even came close to getting a spell off, not that I had any of the gear I needed to really brew up something potent.

The dark arts weren’t going to get me out of this mess, but there was more than one kind of magic. I’d tried doing things the dumb way. Now I needed to play it smart.

I started to sweat as the sun crested over the mountains. The cramped stone room was a broiler in the desert heat, and nothing but the glare of the sun came in through that miserly little window. Maybe an hour later, the door rattled. I braced myself.

The kid who came in had a plastic tray in one hand and a gun in the other. He looked eighteen, maybe nineteen, wearing a Warped Tour T-shirt and khaki shorts with flip-flops. I sat on the floor and held up my open hands, trying to look harmless.

“Hey,” I said, “any chance I could get a fan in here or something? In case you haven’t noticed, this is Nevada.”

He set down the tray, careful, keeping his eyes on me and the gun level the entire time. Smart kid. Well trained. On the tray were two plastic bottles of Aquafina and an apple.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he said. He looked at me like I was a curiosity in a circus exhibit.

“Most cults, you know the first thing they do when they get their hooks into you? Tell you who you can and can’t talk to. That’s how they make sure you don’t hear anything they don’t want you to hear. Trust me, I used to be in one.”

“This isn’t a cult,” he said. “It’s a family. Sullivan takes care of us.”

“Sounds like something I would have said, back in the day. What about blood? Your folks know where you are?”

He shook his head. The skin of his cheek rippled, just a little, as his demonic side tried to assert itself. “Never knew my dad. Mom died having me. I’ve been on the street since pretty much forever. That’s where he found me, where he finds most of us.”

“And tells you how evil you are, and how you need to be purified. You know your boss is a demon, right?”

“He’s transcended. He’s not a demon anymore, not really. He’s going to show us all how to be like him.”

I cracked open the first bottle of water. I’d never been so thirsty in my life, but I held back. I didn’t want to give him a chance to wriggle off the hook.

“Why do you need to be like him?” I asked. “What’s so bad about being who you are?”

In a heartbeat, his eyes had gone the color and consistency of rotten egg yolk, his face and hands blemished with scabs and acne.

“
Look at me
!” he shouted. “This is the real me! I’m filthy on the outside because I’m filthy on the inside. I was born in sin. I’m stained. Ruined.”

“I know a few cambion who lead happy, healthy lives, just like anybody else. I could introduce you, if you wanted. Heck, one’s a girl around your age, and she’s pretty cute. You never know what could happen.”

He took a step backward, shaking his head, back in his human mask.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he said. “Sullivan warned me you’d try to get in my head, try to confuse me.”

I sighed. “What’s your name?”

“Tyler.”

“Tyler,” I said, “you seem like a good kid. Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I’m going to offer you a deal. Walk away. Get in your car, drive out of here, and never come back. Do it right now. Go find a life for yourself, a real life, far away from this nuthouse.”

“What if I don’t?”

I looked him square in the eyes.

“You’re standing between me and that door. Which means I’m going to have to kill you. I’ll feel bad about it, believe me, I will, but that won’t stop me from putting you in the ground. Leave now, or die. Those are your only options.”

He gave a nervous laugh.

“I’ve got the gun.”

I just shrugged. He backed out of the room. The bolts on the door slammed shut while I chugged the entire bottle of lukewarm water and started on the second one.

I had thirsty work ahead of me.

Sixteen

F
irst, I listened.

Tyler patrolled the hallway outside my makeshift cell once every twenty minutes, on the nose. I recognized the sound of his flip-flops slapping the flagstone floors. Once I pinned his movements down and figured out when it was safe to make a little noise, I went to work. I hauled one of the shipping crates across the room, putting it directly across from the door. Then I laid the antique mirror on its back, held my breath, and stomped down hard in the middle of the glass. It cracked under my heel, shattering into a constellation of glittering shards.

I wasn’t superstitious about these things. Bad luck was something I gave to other people.

I fished out a fist-sized chunk of the broken mirror and started looking for an angle. The merciless sun was my best friend now, and I squinted as I caught its glare in the glass like Prometheus stealing the secret of fire. Timing was everything, and the clock wasn’t on my side. With my heart thudding against my chest, I turned the mirror and angled the ray into the open crate.

After five minutes I was sure my plan was a bust, but I kept at it, holding the hot mirror as steady as I could. Slowly, a wisp of black smoke rose up from the heap of mildewed monks’ robes. The wisp became a plume and then blossomed into orange flame.

Almost time for the next patrol. I watched the flames spread, hoping this wasn’t time for Tyler to knock off and get some lunch. With the crate itself starting to ignite, fire chewing into the old and splintery wood, the growing cloud of black smoke could kill me as easily as Sullivan himself.

I heard footsteps. My muscles tensed, going into fight-or-flight mode. I grabbed a robe from the other crate and flapped it toward the door, guiding some of the smoke so it’d drift under the frame and into the corridor outside.

“Fire!” I shouted, dropping the robe and getting ready. “Help! Fire!”

The doorknob rattled. Tyler burst in, gun ready, his eyes instinctively drawn toward the burning crate. It was a momentary distraction, the heartbeat of confusion and fear that I needed. That was when I ran up, blindsided him, and drove a jagged seven-inch shard of broken mirror through his throat.

His eyes bulged. He fell, clutching his throat with one hand while dark blood guttered down the front of his concert T-shirt. He tried to shoot me, but his gun arm flopped like a fish. I plucked the pistol from his grip, easy as taking a rattle from an infant. Tyler’s legs kicked spasmodically as he stared up at me. He was just lucid enough to understand he was dying. Maybe he hoped I’d change my mind. Maybe I’d grab some of those robes, bandage up his neck, stabilize him, and call for help. Maybe he’d survive this.

I shook my head.

“Sorry, kid,” I told him. There wasn’t anything else worth saying. I left him to die.

I forced my feelings into a little box in the back of my mind. Guilt was a luxury for later. Right now, I couldn’t afford to think about anything but survival.

The corridor outside the cell rounded a bend in either direction. Coin toss. I remembered the way they’d brought me in, but that would take me out into the courtyard. I’d be a sitting duck out there. Besides, I needed wheels to get back to Vegas. If I ran out into that desert on foot, I’d be vulture food by sunset. I jogged the opposite direction from the courtyard, hoping I’d spot something useful.

I ducked into an alcove and pressed my back to the hot adobe wall when I heard voices coming my way. The gun was an equalizer, but only when it came to the cambion. Sullivan would just swallow the bullets and spit them back out at me.

“—think he’ll really help us?” one of Sullivan’s followers said, lugging grocery bags down the hallway. Her companion nodded.

“The father’s a good man. He’s been in the chapel with Sullivan all night, talking. They’re in there right now.”

Damn it. There went my hopes of a rescue operation. The demon was keeping Alvarez close to his side, which meant I didn’t have a hope of stealing him back. I might have felt better if I knew exactly what Sullivan’s scheme was.

Then again, maybe not.

The translation had to be the key. If I could reach the church before any of Sullivan’s minions and get my hands on that text, at least I’d have some kind of bargaining chip. I hoped Alvarez had kept his mouth shut.

Once the coast was clear, I cut through an empty sitting room, keeping to the shadows and under an overhanging balcony. It could have been the common room in a college dorm, right down to the scattered books and magazines and a video game console hooked up to a big-screen television. Most colleges, though, didn’t have assault-rifle cleaning manuals or guides to the proper care of plastic explosives on the syllabus.

Sullivan had a hell of a racket going on here. Find vulnerable cambion who didn’t have families to turn to, teach them to hate themselves down to the very core, and then put guns in their hands. They’d do anything he told them to, as long as he kept dangling the promise of salvation over their heads. I’d seen this song and dance before.

Now I had two good reasons to keep this escape from turning into a gunfight. I couldn’t take Sullivan down by myself, and I wasn’t looking for a fight with his followers. They’d sure as hell kill me, though. I found a back door adjacent to a parking lot, just a cluster of cars in ragged rows near the edge of the mission’s outer wall. I kept my head down and ran for it. One of the locals drove a pickup truck, an old F-350 with some muscle under the hood. I broke out the driver’s-side window with the butt of the pistol, let myself in, and popped the plastic panel under the steering wheel. About three minutes later, after a few false starts as I struggled to remember how to hot-wire one of these models, the ignition throbbed and the radio turned on.