The Long Way Down (35 page)

Respect for an old landmark aside, I wouldn’t have minded if the tower went up in flames and took Lauren and her cult with it. It wouldn’t burn fast enough to stop them from opening the Box, though, and if we went up to confront them we’d end up trapped at the top of a raging inferno. The hotel had a fire-suppression system—the tiny sprinkler nozzles studding the lobby ceiling were proof of it—but the thick black smoke roiling from the burning hallway wasn’t doing a thing besides killing us slowly. Maybe triggering the system by hand would work.

Around the corner, in a utility room the size of a walk-in closet, I discovered why the sprinklers weren’t coming on. Metal panels sat propped against the wall, the innards of the hotel’s alarm and fire system nothing but a gutted mess of empty fuse slots and bare wires. Since Carmichael-Sterling Nevada’s pledge to renovate and reopen the Silverlode was nothing but a sham in the first place, they hadn’t put any effort into hooking up more than basic electricity.

Not like they have to worry about the place burning down either
, I thought,
considering they believe they’re about to enslave a couple of magic genies who can whisk them away to safety.

The fire would spread. Too fast for the hotel tower to be anything but a death trap, too slow to do our job for us. I figured I’d meet up with Jennifer in the lobby, help clear a path to the front door, and we’d figure out a plan once our escape route was in place.

I was almost to the check-in desk when a burning mannequin, shrieking and thrashing its blazing wooden arms, threw itself at me.

I jumped back, swinging my shotgun like a club. The barrel cracked across the side of its head and dropped it in the open doorway, where it flopped brokenly. The threshold caught fire. Flames spread across the plaster walls and seared them black.

“Daniel!” Jennifer shouted, running over. She stood on the opposite side of a growing wall of fire. Her hands, shimmering mirages in the heat, reached helplessly for me. It was no good. The wild flames took to the narrow hallway like a junkie to a crack vial.

“Forget it!” I said, backing off from the creeping blaze. “Can you get out through the front door?”

She nodded, looking back over her shoulder. “But what about you?”

What about me? I couldn’t think about that right now. I still had a job to do.

“I’ll find another way, don’t worry. I’ll be fine! Do me a favor: wait two minutes and send the main elevator up to the top floor. Then get out of here. Go meet up with the others. I’ll be in touch.”

She gritted her teeth, frustrated, but nodded her assent. I turned and ran.

“Don’t know if you’re keeping up on current events—” I said, one hand on my earpiece.

“On it,” Bentley’s voice crackled. “Cormie’s looking for fire exits.”

“What I need right now is that service elevator. Our deadline just got a little tighter.”

I jogged down a maintenance corridor, past a corkboard still displaying yellowed bulletins from ten years ago.

“Take the first left,” Bentley said after a moment’s pause, “then a short right.”

The service elevator was big enough to deliver a grand piano. Dirty canvas padding covered the walls, and a scuffed rubber mat lined the floor. I hit the button for twelve and the doors rumbled shut, the cage springing to life with a wheezing groan.

I thought back to every fire drill I had sat through as a kid, and how they had hammered it into my head that the one thing you never, ever do in a fire is use the elevators. Of course, I was pretty sure “don’t pick a fight with a crew of sorcerers who already kicked your ass once this week” was also on the list of things you shouldn’t do. I wasn’t setting any safety records tonight.

Right about now, Jennifer would be sending the empty main elevator up to the Klondike, giving me the chance to slip around and get the element of surprise. At least, I hoped so. It was the only advantage I was going to get.

I held my breath. The elevator chimed.

Top floor, end of the line.

Forty-Two

T
he doors ground open, too loud for my liking, on a dark and empty kitchen. Fat blending bowls and double-decker ovens gathered dust. They’d been abandoned for years. I dropped low, crawl-walking around the counters with my shotgun held tight to my chest. Light streamed in through a service window to my left. Hearing voices, I slowly peeked up and over, into the lounge beyond.

The Klondike Room really was a marvel of Old Vegas. I could imagine Sinatra singing on the scallop-walled stage with an approving crowd spread among the plush red velvet chairs and low glass cocktail tables. Toward the back, near the great brass doors of the main elevator, tables set with faded white cloth waited for a steak dinner that would never arrive.

Tonight’s performance was nothing so elegant. The Etruscan Box sat on a black marble pillar at center stage. Swirls and sigils in bone-white chalk adorned the wooden slats around it. Hundreds of candles flooded the room with flickering light, set out on every table and ledge in patterns that hinted at some mad geometric design. On the only table without a candle, set up on stage squarely before the Box, sat five little pouches.

“I can’t believe he’s this fucking stupid,” Meadow said, planted in front in front of the elevator doors. Tiny glowing numbers inched their way upward, the empty cage making its way to the top floor.

“I can’t believe he got past your traps,” Sheldon said from the stage, kneeling as he put the final touches on a painted glyph. “It’s almost like you’re more interested in torturing people than building an effective security system.”

“Ms. Carmichael,” Meadow said, “please tell Sheldon that if his idiot brother hadn’t fucked things up, we wouldn’t even be in this situation. And Tony would still be alive.”

“Lauren,” Sheldon said as he stood up and brushed the dust from his slacks, “please tell Little Miss Torquemada that if she’d spend more time acting like a professional and less time acting like something out of a horror movie—”

“Both of you, quiet,” Lauren said. She stood, imperious and regal, a step behind Meadow. Her hands wavered in the candlelight, slow and sinuous, fingertips trailing luminous green mist.

Meadow turned her head, the light catching her ravaged face, and I held my breath. A vicious scar ran from her forehead to her jaw, carving off a lop of skin at the side of her nose. A string of tape and sutures held her raw, red flesh together.

“He dies slow,” she hissed, “him and anyone with him.”

Lauren narrowed her eyes, concentrating on the elevator door. “He dies, period, and we get back to work.”

Three against one is a sucker’s bet. Odds were I’d be dead in the next ten minutes. Jennifer and me together, we might have taken them, but I’m a firm believer in contingency plans. Mine sat snug in my hip pocket, right next to my deck of cards.

If you can’t change the odds, you can always change the game.

“Is Jenny safe?” I whispered as loud as I dared, hoping the earpiece would pick it up.

“She’s here with me,” Margaux said. “Fire department’s on the way, and they’ve cleared Fremont Street. You can see the flames in the windows, up to the third floor and climbing fast.”

“You have to leave,” Bentley cut in. “
Now
, Daniel. Cormie says there’s an old fire escape on the west side of the building, but it stops at the eighth floor. You don’t have much time!”

I took the earpiece and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. No distractions. My breath slowed. My pupils dilated, showing me the room in a spray of color, the winds of magic tracing the world in violet and gold. When we had fought at Spengler’s house, they got the drop on me. Things were different now.

They’d probably kill me, but I’d make damn sure they bled for their victory.

The elevator let out a merry chime. Before the doors were even halfway open, Lauren unleashed a torrent of bilious green fog, spilling from her hands like a flamethrower’s plume and flooding the elevator cage with acidic death. She was just realizing her mistake, looking at the steaming, pitted ruins of an empty elevator, when I burst through the swinging kitchen door and blasted them with the shotgun.

I was fast. Lauren was faster. She spun and threw up her empty palm. The air shimmered, turning to jelly, and a wall of shotgun pellets hung in the web of her makeshift shield before tumbling to the ground. She twirled her other hand in a spinning motion, pointing, and suddenly I wasn’t holding a shotgun anymore. A fat rattlesnake nestled in my hands, its head twisting around to bite. On instinct, I threw the snake as far as I could. By the time it landed the illusion was gone, and my weapon clattered against the edge of the stage.

I only had the one cartridge left anyway. I went for my cards, but then I saw Sheldon running up on me, his fists glowing with furious red energy. I couldn’t let him get close, not yet. I circled the closest table, a four-seater draped for dinner and displaying a dozen candles in tiny silver cups.

“For my next trick,” I announced and grabbed hold of the tablecloth’s edge. The cloth whipped away in one smooth movement and left the candles standing on bare wood, untouched. Keeping the momentum, I swung the tablecloth over my head, bringing it around and letting it fly. It hit Sheldon square in the face and wrapped around him like a needy ghost, enveloping his arms and legs and sending him to the ground in a kicking tangle.

A lance of green light flashed past my eyes, striking the wood-paneled wall and leaving a sizzling hole in its wake. I raced across the room, jumping over Sheldon, as my cards leaped from my pocket in a riffling stream to land in the palm of my outstretched hand. I ducked another of Lauren’s blasts and offered my retort, sending a pair of luminous poker cards screaming across the room like razor-edged boomerangs. Lauren threw herself behind a potted plant. Meadow ran over to help Sheldon, tugging at the clingy enchanted tablecloth.

“Gimme your gun!” she shrieked at Sheldon as he forced one arm free. “Give me your fucking gun!”

Lauren and I darted from cover to cover like gunfighters at high noon, taking shots where we could, keeping our heads down and our hands fast. I was almost to the stage when Sheldon got loose, shoving Meadow away and charging like an enraged bull. He had his pistol, all right, but he was good and pissed and wanted to finish this fight with his bare hands. Perfect. That’s what I was counting on.

I backed up a few steps onto the stage and turned to face him. My timing had to be absolutely flawless, or it was all over. I raised my open hand, invoking the threads of a spell.

He lunged out with a curled fist, sending a shockwave of power that hit me point blank in the stomach from five feet away, knocking the wind out of me and shattering my concentration. Then he leaped, his foot a blur as it whirled toward me. I felt ribs crack as I flew backward, slamming into the table with the soul-trap pouches and sending it clattering to the ground, leaving me prone in a puddle of broken glass. Sheldon crouched over me, grabbed me by my collar, and hoisted me up, his fist drawn back.

I didn’t see it land. I just felt the sudden white-hot pain as my nose cracked, painting my vision blood red, and then nothing.

I must have only been out for a couple of minutes. I woke up, propped up against a railing off to the side of the stage. I tasted blood, my upper lip wet and sticky. My nose and ribs throbbed with icy pain.

Meadow Brand stood over me. She had Sheldon’s gun now. He and Lauren were working to touch up the stage, fixing the paint I’d smeared and setting the soul-traps in their proper place once more.

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” I said with an exhausted smile. Meadow’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“Spirited,” Lauren said, walking over to join us, “but you’re on the wrong side, Mr. Faust. You act like we’re trying to destroy the world, when we only want to save it.”

“Yeah? I know a dead little girl who probably thinks different.”

She looked wounded. “We aren’t sociopaths, Mr. Faust. A sociopath is, by definition, incapable of human empathy. Opening the Box requires a sacrifice of loved ones. We have all paid for our work, paid in pain and tears.”

“Not nearly enough,” I said.

“You’ll understand,” she said with a faintly condescending smile. “Ms. Brand has requested that you be kept alive, in order to see the glory of our work. And to…make amends for injuring her.”

Meadow stared down the sights of the gun with a killer’s eyes.

“When our new slaves get here,” she snarled, “the things I am gonna make them do to you—you’ll wish you’d never been born. And before I let you die? I’m going to make them gather up all your friends, everybody you ever cared about, so you can watch them suffer and die first.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said to Lauren, ignoring Meadow. “I can tell you’re a bunch of real saints. This one’s humanitarian of the year material.”

“The Enclave project requires a woman of Ms. Brand’s unique talents,” Lauren said with a long-suffering sigh, then shot her a warning glance. “I tolerate her eccentricities. Within limits.”

“Yes ma’am,” Meadow hissed, her eyes fixed on mine. She held the pistol in a steel grip.