The Long Way Down (36 page)

Sheldon clapped his hands from the stage. “We’re ready!”

“Very good,” Lauren said, adjusting the signet ring on her left hand. “Sheldon, you have the honor of opening the lock. I will bind Belephaia as soon as she emerges, then Sitri as he arrives.”

She ascended the stage, standing in an arcane circle painted in daubs of yellow and white. Sheldon stood before the box, arms outstretched, the tray of pouches at his side. Latin words rumbled from his throat, twisting in the air as they slipped back, regressing to a coarser and more barbarous tongue.

Streamers of pale white light slithered from the soul-traps like snakes’ tongues licking the air. The streamers stretched toward the Box, crackling as they made contact with its onyx hasp.

“You really don’t want to do this,” I told Meadow. “You really don’t.”

“Shut up,” she snarled. “We win, you lose. Simple as that.”

The streamers tightened. They were lances now, pulsing and throbbing with pure soul-energy as they spread pools of blazing light in every nook, cranny, and recess of the casket’s face. Sheldon’s chant grew louder, and louder still, spiraling into a raw-throated ecstatic cry.

The Box opened.

Forty-Three

I
shouldn’t have looked.

I knew I shouldn’t have looked, but as the Box slowly opened, swinging on ancient hinges, I sat in the perfect spot to take a peek inside. What I saw would haunt my nightmares forever.

A space bigger than the casket that contained it, infinitely bigger, bathed in blinding light. A feathered wing covered in thousands of blinking, staring eyes, each a different color, each pronouncing a different judgment on my corrupt heart. Knowing every sin I’d ever committed and every sin I ever would commit, my heart nearly bursting under the weight of their raw hatred. I saw the tip of a yellowed and rotting bone spear, long and wickedly curved, then realized I was looking at a fingernail…

One of the streamers of light sputtered. It yanked me from my reverie, hauling me back from the edge of madness and focusing my attention on the soul-traps. Sheldon looked at them, dumbfounded, shaking his head as the errant light crackled and whipped back, recoiling into its pouch as if rejected.

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

I just leaned back and smiled.

“The number of souls is five,” I said, echoing what the smoke-faced man had told Lauren so many years ago. “What was it he said? ‘To open the Box without the requisite sacrifice invites the wrath of its guardians.’ Something like that?”

Lauren looked at me, torn between outrage and sudden terror. “What did you do?”

“It must not be denied that I am a plain-dealing villain,” I said, the smile slipping from my face as my eyes went hard. “I fucked you over, that’s what.”

The storm tunnel stank of mildew and regret. Stacy’s pouch rested heavy in my hand. Her half-formed wraith hovered across the line of dust, tortured mouth wide in a soundless wail.

“I know. I’m so sorry. I want to free you, but…I need to hold onto this, just a little while longer. I swear to you, though. I swear to you, I’ll be back as soon as I’m done.”

“My timing had to be perfect,” I told Lauren, “and it was. I
let
Sheldon hit me, so he could knock me right into the tray of soul-traps. Once I went down, palming one of the pouches and switching it with Stacy’s half-empty one was easy. Four and a half souls. You opened the box without the proper sacrifice. Gotta think that’s going to hurt.”

The Box slammed shut. A new light boiled from the ebony casket itself, violent and swirling, the color of orange stained glass. Sheldon looked over, pinned in place, trembling as he called out.

“L-Lauren?”

The other soul-traps snapped closed, their lights whipping back into the pouches, rejected and undevoured.

“
Lauren!
” Sheldon screamed, just before the orange light ate him alive.

It crashed over him like a rogue wave, flooding his mouth, saturating his skin, motes of brilliant fire swirling around him. The motes ate him like a school of piranha feasting on a bleeding calf. Skin tore away in tiny chunks, blood spattering the stage, the light shredding him one nickel-sized bite of flesh at a time.

Meadow lunged at me, pressing the barrel of her gun to my forehead. I’d been waiting. I jerked my head to the side and grabbed the pistol, twisting it hard and yanking it from her grip. She dove out of the way as I fired off two fast shots. The bullets went wide, shattering a glass table and sending burning candles to the floor, a tablecloth igniting.

Sheldon’s eyes exploded. Still transfixed by the light, he shrieked endlessly as it chewed him down to ragged muscle and bone. Lauren ran from the stage, throwing up a desperate shield to ripple the air as I snapped off another shot. Meadow waited by the emergency stairwell, holding the door open.

“Lauren!” Meadow shouted. “Let’s
go
!”

“You’re not leaving,” I snarled, giving chase. Then I froze and looked back. The Silverlode was going down in flames, literally. If I abandoned the pouches on the stage, they’d be lost forever. Maybe the souls trapped inside would be freed when the enchanted leather burned, but maybe they wouldn’t.

I could settle up with Lauren and Meadow another time. Cursing under my breath, I dove for the stage as hungry tendrils of orange light snapped like whips just above my head. I grabbed the tray, clutched it to my chest, and rolled clear as Sheldon’s ravaged corpse collapsed in a bloody heap. I didn’t stop running until I hit the emergency stairwell, pausing just long enough to count the pouches and stow them in my pockets.

A few floors down, a metal door rattled and chunked shut. I took the concrete steps two at a time, swinging around the handrails. By the time I hit the eighth floor my heart was pounding like a kettledrum and my breath was ragged, but there wasn’t a second to lose. Bentley had said the fire escape topped out on the eighth floor. That must be where Lauren and Meadow were headed, and it’d be my way out too.

The door grip rattled uselessly in my hand. Looking closer, I could see the warped metal in the doorjamb, how it ran like melted wax. They’d destroyed the lock.

I ran down to the seventh floor landing and hauled open the stairwell door. A sudden furnace-blast of heat seared my lungs and stole my breath. Flames licked the walls of the hallway beyond, curling the antique hotel wallpaper and blackening the dusty carpet.

If the fire was this out of control, going any lower would be suicide. I could run back up to nine and hope the flames hadn’t reached it yet, then try jumping down to the fire escape, but if the windows didn’t line up I’d be trapped. Meanwhile, my window of opportunity on seven closing tighter than a hangman’s noose.

I took my last breath of clean air and ran for it, keeping to the middle of the hallway as the fire raged around me. I knew it was a bad idea once I hit the first intersection and suddenly couldn’t tell left from right. The billowing smoke stung my watering eyes, spinning me around, leaving me choking and blind.

The hotel rumbled. Somewhere to my side, sparks flew as a chunk of burning wall came crashing down.

I kept low, my sleeve over my mouth, aching for breath as I ran the other way. I couldn’t inhale without the air gusting back out in a hacking cough. An open doorway offered a hint of escape, and I took it. Dead end. Just another stripped-down hotel room, the ceiling blanketed in roiling smoke.

I ran to the window. Red and blue lights strobed against the darkness far below. No sign of the fire escape. I’d gotten turned around, confused in the chaos, and now I was trapped. Out in the hallway, another tremor sent timbers crashing down from the ceiling, throwing up walls of flame.

Seven floors. I’d heard of people surviving falls from that high up, miracle cases. Far more likely I’d end up a broken ragdoll on the asphalt, but it was still better than burning to death. I threw my shoulder against the window, gritting my teeth against the jarring pain, but the glass didn’t budge. The smoke had stolen my strength and my breath, leaving me weak as a newborn kitten. With my burning eyes squeezed shut I punched the window again and again. I tried to muster the focus for a spell, but constant lung-searing coughs tore my concentration to pieces.

No good. I slumped to the carpet, spent.

I left the earpiece in my pocket. My friends didn’t need to listen to me die. That wasn’t the memory I wanted to leave them with. I just hoped the smoke would kill me before the fire did.

Fuck it
, I thought, bitter.
At least I saved the world.

Something moved in the hallway. A plank of burning wood, shoved aside. I rubbed my streaming eyes as I struggled to focus.

Caitlin strode through the flames, untouched, her white leather greatcoat billowing behind her. I thought I was hallucinating until she scooped me up in her arms.

“You stupid man,” she whispered, cradling my head against her breast. “Hold on tight.”

She took a few steps back and ran, leaping for the window, smashing through. For a brief, shining moment we hung suspended over the abyss, trailed by a frozen rain of glass. It felt like we could fly.

Then I fell, clutched in Caitlin’s arms.

Forty-Four

M
y memories of the night were hazy. I remembered Caitlin bundling me into the back seat of her car, a ride that turned into a gurney slide under too-bright lights, an oxygen mask over my face. Then nothing.

I spent about a week at Desert Springs Hospital, most of it on a respirator. They bandaged my ribs, set my broken nose, and patched up a dozen other cuts and scrapes I didn’t even remember getting. A chubby doctor came by once a day to check my charts and tell me how lucky I was to be alive. He didn’t know the half of it.

I was worried about being connected to the Silverlode fire, but I didn’t need to be. Hospitals have to report knife and gunshot wounds to the cops. Smoke inhalation, not so much. The official story was that I’d been rescued from a house fire out in the burbs, and nobody challenged it.

Tuesday was my discharge day. I woke from a nap to find Bentley sitting at my bedside, reading an Agatha Christie novel.

“I hear they’re letting you go,” he said, slipping in a bookmark and resting the paperback on his knee.

“About damn time, too. That’s the problem with hospitals. They kill you with boredom.”

Out of the corner of my eye, on the grainy television mounted high on the wall, I saw Lauren Carmichael’s face. Grabbing the remote, I unmuted the TV and raised the volume.

“—tragedy for this great community,” she said, flashbulbs popping around her. “Despite the loss of a classic civic landmark, we can only be thankful that the fire was quickly contained, thanks to the hard work of the Las Vegas Fire Department, and that no one was seriously hurt.”

“She’s giving a press conference?” I said.

Bentley glared at the screen. “It’s been repeating all morning. Everybody loves a catastrophe.”

Lauren stared into the camera. I knew it was only a recording, but somehow I could still feel her eyes drilling into mine.

“To the arsonist responsible for this senseless act of destruction, I will say only this. We will find you. And we will bring you to justice.”

“Not if I find you first,” I muttered.

“What’s next for Carmichael-Sterling Nevada?” one reporter called from the audience.

Lauren put on a million-dollar smile. “What’s next? Progress. The tragedy at the Silverlode in no way hinders our primary goal, the completion of the Enclave Resort and Casino. We intend to put a new face on Las Vegas. New life, new jobs, new capital and growth. Make no mistake: the Enclave will rise.”

I muted the television.

“So what’s next for Daniel Faust?” Bentley asked.

“Funny. Normally I’d say, ‘The same thing I did last month and the month before that.’ You know me, I’ve never been too purpose-driven. Still…”

“Yes?”

“Feels like maybe I should be,” I said. “Don’t know. Just feels like I’m missing out on something. Used to be happy just coasting by. Maybe that’s not enough anymore.”