The Long Way Down (28 page)

“The only way to put Nicky’s father on my prince’s throne,” she mused, “is to remove Prince Sitri from power. That cannot happen.”

“Depends on what’s in the Box,” I said, “or what these people think is in the Box, anyway. Maybe they want to make him step down of his own free will? Could it be a blackmail thing?”

She laughed, high and merry. “Blackmail my prince? I think if anyone actually managed that, he’d reward them for their cleverness. Then destroy them. No, it must be an attack of some kind. Troubling, though. It sounds like this is just another side effect of Lauren Carmichael’s plan, not her real goal. A bone they’re tossing Nicky in order to secure his cooperation.”

“What could dethrone a demon prince as a
side effect
?” I said. “It would have to be something…”

Caitlin turned, pressing herself against me, our bodies glistening in the pulsating spray. “Apocalyptic,” she murmured, kissing me. “I may have a lead. You’ve mentioned that India keeps coming up, in regards to Carmichael’s past.”

“A couple of times, yeah.”

She turned me around and traced the curve of my shoulders with a bar of soap.

“My nocturnal ramblings led me to some old news stories about her alma mater, Stanford. Many years ago a young Lauren, undertaking her freshman studies of archeology, talked her way onto a field expedition to southern Nepal, near Chitwan. The team intended to explore and document a recently-excavated temple complex dating back to the Maurya Empire.”

I closed my eyes, savoring her touch. “And how did that go?”

“Badly. Two weeks into the expedition, their camp was attacked by murderous bandits. By some miracle, Lauren survived.”

“Miracle, huh?” I shook my head. “She’s not the kind of person who depends on miracles. Did anybody else make it out?”

“One man. Her professor and mentor, Dr. Eugene Planck. Upon his return he was immediately hospitalized with a nervous breakdown, which quickly progressed into full-blown psychosis. He tried to kill himself by drinking muriatic acid. He wanted, according to witnesses, to ‘burn the parasite.’ His family had him committed.”

Burn the parasite. I thought about Lauren’s death-curse, the snake creature she’d forced into my stomach, and shuddered. Was that where she had learned the trick?

“Did he die?” I asked.

“No, and as far as I can tell he’s still languishing in a padded room at Napa State Hospital.”

“He knows what happened on that expedition. Dr. Planck is probably the only person who can tell us what Lauren’s become and what she really wants. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m thinking San Francisco is an hour and a half away by plane, and from there it’s a short drive to Napa,” Caitlin said. “We can be there and back in time for a late dinner. Speaking of, how do you feel about scrambled eggs and sausage?”

My stomach gave an involuntary grumble. With all the chaos, I couldn’t remember the last time I sat down for a decent meal.

“Sounds great,” I said.

“Fantastic.” She turned off the shower and reached for a towel. “You’ll find my kitchen is well stocked. You cook while I go online and buy our tickets. Oh, don’t use any of the meat in the red Tupperware.”

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t like it. It’s…not for you.”

She hummed a happy tune as she wrapped a towel around her hair and strolled off. Alone for a moment, I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

“So,” I said to myself, “now you’re dating a creature from hell. That’s new.”

I was okay with that.

No, better than okay. Being with Caitlin felt…natural, in a way I couldn’t find words for. Like her hand was made to fit in mine. I dreaded the inevitable conversation with Bentley and Corman about it, but for now I was happy just to see where this road would take us. In a week marred by death and pain, I’d found a single red rose growing in the ruins.

I’d take the thorns as they came.

Thirty-Four

T
wo hours later we leaned back in stiff chairs as our plane roared down the runway, lifting off for California skies. Caitlin had bought us tickets for business class, and we were sitting toward the back on a half-empty flight.

“Normally I prefer first class,” she told me, “but I felt a low profile would be wise. We don’t know how many eyes Lauren has, and I imagine she wouldn’t want us talking to her dear old professor.”

“I’m wondering why she let him live,” I said. “And on the note of paying for things, I’m reimbursing you for the tickets.”

“No you aren’t,” Caitlin said. “It’s a business expense. I am investigating a potential threat to my prince’s safety. I just have to fill out an expense report when we get back.”

The plane leveled out. Wisps of cloud slithered past my window. I tilted my head, looking at her.

“Expense report? It just seems a little modern for, well, who you work for.”

She fished in her handbag, a slender black Louis Vuitton, and handed me her business card.

“Southern Tropics Import/Export Company

Caitlin Brody, Regional Manager”

“We believe in keeping up with the times,” she said. “It’s not all backward Latin and slaughtered goats.”

The drink cart trundled down the aisle. Caitlin promptly ordered a pair of ginger ales for us. I stared at her.

“Are you going to keep doing that?” I asked.

“Doing what?”

“Ordering for me.”

“Oh,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth in mock surprise. “Do you mean you
weren’t
just feeling slightly airsick, and a bottle of ginger ale
wouldn’t
help your stomach feel better?”

“I suppose,” I said, unscrewing the cap, “you may kinda sorta have a point.”

“Besides, you get the most adorably consternated look on your face.”

I had to smile at that. She was right about the ginger ale, anyway. I waited until the stewardess pushing the drink cart was farther up the aisle, leaving us alone in our little pocket of empty seats. I wasn’t looking forward to this, but it was time we laid all our cards on the table.

“Tell me about the ring,” I said and tried not to shrink under the sudden, ferocious weight of Caitlin’s glare. I held up a hand. “Nicky’s seer babbled about a ring Lauren has, something she uses as a tool. She’s also got the ability to bind demons with nothing but her own willpower, which is supposed to be impossible. I put two and two together.”

“You shouldn’t have. I told you, that knowledge is worth—”

“My life, right, I know what you said. But that was then and this is now. Cait…I trust you. Can you trust me?”

She stared at me for a long moment, her gaze softening, then finally shook her head with a sigh of resignation. “All right. But this goes no further. I mean that. It stays with you and it dies with you. If word of what she possesses leaked, there would be a bloodbath like you’ve never imagined.”

I leaned closer to her, blinking. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Ever read the
1,001 Arabian Nights
? Do you know the legend of King Solomon’s temple?”

“Sure. Solomon was commissioned by angels to build a temple for storing the Ark of the Covenant. He was offered any payment he could imagine, but he only asked for wisdom. To reward his humility, he was granted magic powers and a ring that could…” My voice trailed off as I realized what she was saying. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“A ring that could command demons,” Caitlin said.

“But that’s just a legend, isn’t it?”

“Legends take on lives of their own,” she said. “Did it actually belong to Solomon? I don’t think so. The first reports about it in hell’s archives date back to Emperor Constantine’s day, far too late. No idea who made it or how, and it has the most damnable habit of slipping in and out of history before we can get our claws on it. The bottom line is, it’s here, it works, and Lauren Carmichael has it.”

“If word got out to the occult underground,” I said, shaking my head. “Christ, it’s the ultimate prize. We’d have hex-slingers flying in from the other side of the world to take a shot at getting their hands on that thing. Mages would be killing each other in the streets. A bloodbath doesn’t begin to describe it.”

She nodded. “Now add to that what my people would do in the name of survival. That ring is perhaps the greatest weapon ever placed in humanity’s grasp. We have no defense against it, no refuge from enslavement at its owner’s hands. Imagine how frightening that is for us. We don’t respond well to being frightened, Daniel. Not well at all.”

“It’s a goddamned weapon of mass destruction is what it is. A nuke in a signet ring.” I shook my head. “I hate to say it, but you’re right. Nobody can know about this. What really worries me is that Carmichael’s playing a long game. She’s not drunk on power. The ring’s just another tool to her, a means to an end.”

“There are few things more dangerous than a zealot with discipline,” Caitlin mused, sipping her ginger ale.

• • •

My hands clenched against the wheel of our rental car as I pulled into the visitor parking lot past a polished granite sign reading Napa State Hospital. It looked like a college campus with a splash of barbed wire.

“You all right?” Caitlin asked as we walked toward the entrance. I hadn’t realized my tension was showing.

“When I was a kid,” I started to say, then shook my head. “I just don’t like places like this.”

Inside, it could have been any hospital in the world, with attentive orderlies and wide, clean halls. Still, a sense of lingering sadness clung to the bricks, the strange sick smell of frustration and mental decay. I wasn’t sure if it was the weight of over a century of madness, festering and breeding in the shadows, or just my own personal demons reminding me they were never far away.

We’d called ahead. I thought we might have to pull some kind of a scam, talk our way past the front desk or worse, break in under cover of night, but Dr. Planck was on the “approved for visitors” list. All we had to do was ask. There was still the chance that he’d refuse to see us, but something told me he’d want an audience.

The visitor center reminded me of a nicer county jail. Warm colors, sunny windows, and the constant reminder that your every move was being watched. Caitlin stored her handbag in a locker, along with my wallet and keys, and we walked through a metal detector. We waited in pensive silence until an orderly brought Planck in to see us.

Draped in a beige gown, his snowy-white hair cascading over his bloodshot eyes, Eugene Planck was a dead man walking. His heavily lined face turned curiously toward us as he hobbled over to the table. At first I thought they’d brought us the wrong patient. According to what Caitlin had dug up, he should have been in his fifties, but this man had to have been pushing eighty. Caitlin and I shared a glance, thinking the same thing: he looked like someone had sucked years of his life out through his pores, leaving nothing but a withered husk behind.

“Dr. Planck,” I said, rising to my feet. “Thank you for seeing us.”

He favored us with a tired smile, sitting down on the other side of the table. “Nobody’s called me doctor in a very long time,” he rasped. His voice was raw and his words forced their way out on a strangled wheeze. I remembered what Caitlin had told me about his first suicide attempt—guzzling down acid to burn the parasite in his stomach. “Nobody’s come to visit me, either. A rare surprise.”

I rested my palms on the table, casting a quick look at the orderly loitering by the door and keeping my voice low.

“I’ll lay it on the line for you, Doctor. We need to know everything you can tell us about Lauren Carmichael and the expedition to Nepal.”

A pained look crossed his face and he shook his head. “Oh, no, it was so long ago. So very long ago. I’m sure I can’t remember.”

He was a lousy liar, but I didn’t blame him. The haunted look in his eyes told me to go easy.

“Please,” I said. “I know you’ve seen some bad stuff. I know it left scars. You don’t want to go back there, and I don’t want to make you. Thing is, she’s hurting people, innocent people. She’s gotta be stopped.”

He laughed, a wheezing choke that turned into a wet, hacking cough. He put his hand to his mouth, catching his breath.

“You’ll just end up like me,” he said.

“You tried to stop her?”

“Didn’t try hard enough,” Eugene said, his gaze going distant. “If I’d known, if I’d known what she was capable of…no. I still would have been too late. I was delusional and in love.”

“She was your student,” Caitlin said, and he nodded.

“It happens on every campus, I suppose. Usually lecherous old professors and nubile coeds looking for an easy A. Lauren and I, though, that was different. She was brilliant, the brightest student I’d ever had, and the most ambitious. I tutored her late into the night, and soon she was sharing my bed.”

“So she was using you,” Caitlin said.

“No, no,” he said. “Well, not entirely. She did have feelings for me. I have proof of that.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because she let me live.”

“Doctor,” I said, “what happened in Nepal?”

He sighed. “You don’t understand. I can’t talk about it. She won’t let me.”