Redemption Song (17 page)

Not many people would request a book like Zeller’s
Pandaemonium
, and I wouldn’t want to meet anyone who considered it suitable bedtime reading. The meaty tome was an encyclopedia of atrocities, a compendium of some of the worst monsters of human history with their known and suspected links to the occult underworld laid bare. The author spent thirty years putting it all together, sent it to a small press for a limited run of a hundred copies, and then he took a bath with a plugged-in toaster.

De Rais had his own entry, all right. He’d started out well enough: commander in the Royal Army, fought in the Hundred Years War, even became Marshal of France. He ran out of battlefields, and that was when the trouble started. Spent years squandering cash on lavish pageants, even built a cathedral, and meanwhile he was murdering children and offering up their body parts in secret black masses.

“Zeller was nuts,” I said, emerging from the back an hour later with the book still in my hands.

Bentley shrugged. “Undoubtedly, but his academic work was solid.”

“No, I mean, five
hundred
victims? Did he add an extra zero by mistake?”

“It was the 1400s, Daniel, long before scientific criminology and DNA testing. You could get away with the most abhorrent things, especially with the privilege of a nobleman’s title.”

“There’s another problem,” I said, pointing to the page. “Zeller claims that de Rais sold his soul to a demon named Naavarasi. Every other source I looked at said the demon’s name was Barron, with two
r
’s.”

Bentley chuckled gently. “Middle English, Daniel. ‘Barron’ with two
r
’s eventually became ‘baron’ with one
r,
as in the title of nobility. Someone was having a laugh, I suspect. You’re looking for Baron Naavarasi.”

“Who doesn’t seem to exist. I checked the
Goetia
, Lightman’s
Compendium Rouge
, there’s no record of a demon by that name.”

“Use-names change, and anyone can claim a title. De Rais’s master could have been anyone. Could be anyone, today. Six hundred years is a long time.”

Another dead end. The sun slunk low in the sky, sketching a shadow across the dusty floorboards. Sunset on my final day. Bentley saw the look on my face.

“What are you going to do?” he said.

I shook my head.

“Talk to Caitlin. Tell her I did my best.”

Even as I walked away, I already knew my best wasn’t good enough.

Twenty-Two

U
sually, the elevator ride up to Caitlin’s penthouse felt like the space between heartbeats. Tonight, it was a convict’s slow march to the electric chair. I’d promised I would figure out a way to deal with Sitri’s challenge, find some way to outfox the demon prince at his own game. I couldn’t have crashed and burned any more miserably. Now I had to pay the price.

In a curving hall of white paint and white light, I steeled myself and knocked on Caitlin’s door. She answered, her clothes rumpled, her eyes tired. She hadn’t been sleeping again, and I could guess why. She didn’t invite me in. She stood on the threshold, barring the way, looking in my eyes for some glimmer of hope.

“The priest is alive,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She didn’t need to ask.

“I’m making progress. Look, I know what Lauren and Sullivan are both after. There’s holes, questions I don’t have the answers to yet, but I’m making progress—”

She held up her hand.

“Don’t. Daniel, just…don’t. Don’t say three more days, because in three days you’ll come back and ask for three more. My prince had a point to make. He made it.”

My heart sank. The worst part, the worst part of this whole damn mess, was seeing the disappointment in her eyes. Knowing I put it there.

“So is this—”

She shook her head.

“Don’t say goodbye.” Caitlin’s voice almost broke. Almost. “No. I won’t say it either. I don’t want to say it. I won’t do it. But this isn’t working. I’ve been pacing the floors, trying to puzzle it out, but all I find is the same brick wall. I want to be with you. I just don’t know how. As it stands, my prince has forbidden it. I can’t rebel against him—”

I reached out, as if to touch her, then froze. My hand just hung there in the air between us, awkward and useless.

“And I’m not asking you to,” I said. “I wouldn’t. You know that. I’m just asking for a little faith. Don’t count me out, Cait. I’m always at my best when my back’s against the wall.”

She smiled. Her eyes were still sad, but she smiled.

“I know,” she said. “So I’m not saying goodbye. Only goodnight.”

She closed the door and left me standing in an empty hall.

• • •

When you’re flush and lucky, the Vegas Strip at night is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. When you’re down and out, though, all those beautiful lights are like bullets aimed at your heart. I moved like a ghost through the tourist crowds, anonymous and alone.

If I’d done what Sitri wanted and put Father Alvarez in the ground, none of this would have happened. I’d have Caitlin, my home, my car, my cash…and I’d hate myself forever. Instead, I kept my principles and lost everything else.

The demon prince must have known I’d refuse him, and he’d led me into a tangled maze. Sullivan was a lunatic chasing an impossible dream, building his plans around an ancient manuscript that couldn’t be real. Lauren aimed to snatch a dead serial killer from the jaws of hell. Trying to follow their schemes was like reading a map printed on a slice of Swiss cheese: I knew I could understand it, if only I had the whole picture instead of bits and pieces.

The end result? They’d burned me to the ground, and I was no closer to untangling this riddle than when I started. Worse than when I started, even, since I’d managed to get Alvarez—the only decent, innocent man in this whole sordid mess—kidnapped and held hostage by a pack of lunatics.

A fat tourist in a Hawaiian shirt shouldered past me, babbling into his cell phone.

“It’s called the Martingale system,” he said, ranting like he’d just discovered gold in the desert. “It’s the perfect system, you literally
can’t
lose!”

I rolled my eyes. The Martingale’s just as much a sucker bet today as it was three hundred years ago. The idea is, you double your bet every time you lose a hand, so that when you win you’re suddenly square again. Which works great, if you’ve got infinite amounts of cash to lose, or some guarantee you won’t hit a losing streak that breaks you. Half the tourists in Vegas think they’ve got all the answers, when they’re just making the same bad decisions over and over again, thinking something different will happen this time.

I stopped in my tracks.

“Sitri, you magnificent bastard,” I said. A guy handing out laminated cards on the corner, his orange shirt emblazoned with QUALITY ESCORTS TO YOUR ROOM, gave me a funny look.

It was my pride that did me in. Happened every time. I was so determined not to be anyone’s pawn, so aggressively opposed to the idea of doing Sitri’s bidding, that I did the exact opposite. I could have just ignored his command. Instead, I sought out Alvarez, tried to save him from the Redemption Choir, and kicked off this whole chain of disasters. Worse, I kept doubling down, stubbornly committed to my course like a fly bouncing off a window when there was an opening just two inches away.

Sitri played chess. I was playing checkers, a dope amateur whose every move showed from a mile away. Sullivan’s boys had thrown the Molotovs and the bullets, but it was Sitri walking me into their line of fire, punishing me for my stupid moves.

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

S
itri 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.