Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(42)

“Seen enough to know it’s wrong to the core,” I said. “What is it? Really?”

Gary shrugged. “You think she tells me? I just know it’s going to be something really big, and really bad. In private, she doesn’t call it the Enclave. She calls it the Engine. She needs a guy to help her finish building it. Problem is, he’s in hell.”

“What guy?”

Gary rubbed his temples, straining to remember.

“Gilles something, something French. De Rais, I think? All I know is, Lauren based part of the design on some of his old journals, but there are chunks missing, and even she isn’t a good enough sorceress to fill in the blanks. So she’s looking to snatch this guy out of hell and make him do it for her.”

Her effort to enslave Prince Sitri suddenly made sense in a whole new light. I had assumed she was just after raw power. What if she figured Sitri was a source of get-out-of-hell-free cards? After we burned down the Silverlode and ruined her plans, she’d be looking for a new angle to get what she wanted.

“So what’s Sullivan’s game?”

“Sullivan,” he said with a heavy sigh, “is convinced that Father Alvarez’s manuscript is legit. He’s also convinced that a cambion in this world who bodily enters hell would be just as powerful down there as an incarnate demon is up here. The purity of their human side granting them strength or something like that. He’s gonna hold the priest hostage until he finishes translating the manuscript, then put it to the test.”

“What? That doesn’t even make sense! None of it makes sense.”

“You think I don’t know that? When Sullivan obsesses over an idea, well, that’s it. No arguing. If he decided the moon was purple, you could take him outside at midnight, point to the sky, and he’d still say it was purple. It was never this bad before, but…Faust, I think he’s losing it. I mean, he was always a little nutty, but I think he’s really losing his goddamn mind.”

“What is he planning to do? Lead his followers down into hell and start flipping tables?”

Gary nodded, looking haunted.

“Pretty much that, yeah. He’s got some scores to settle.”

“Even if the manuscript is real, and I don’t imagine how it can be, the entire Redemption Choir would be slaughtered. Sullivan and everyone who stands with him.”

Gary looked up at the ceiling, lightly thumping the back of his head against the wall, and shut his eyes.

“You gotta understand, Faust. I lost everything because of what I am, because I was born this way. Sullivan found me when I was down and out, and he showed me a different path. I never went in for his quasi-religious revolutionary jive. But when I worked with him, I’d meet other people like me, people who had problems like me. And sometimes I could help them out. That made everything a little easier to take.”

I listened in silence, letting him get it off his chest.

“When he started talking about war and brimstone, I wanted out. But I made a lot of friends in the Choir, and they hung on every word he said. Leaving the Choir meant leaving them behind, and I couldn’t do that. So I stayed in, as close to the fringes as I could, just toeing the line and watching as it all got crazier and crazier. When he assigned me to come out here, I thought I was finally safe.”

“Instead, he came looking for you,” I said. “And he’s about to pull a Jim Jones.”

“He’s been scoping Lauren Carmichael from a distance. See, there’s this old fairy tale. You ever hear of the Ring of Solomon?”

I wore my best poker face, even as my stomach clenched.

“Rings a bell,” I said.

“Well, there’s a rumor going around that she’s got it. The real thing, no myth. I think that’s bullshit, but Sullivan isn’t so sure, and he’s thinking he wants that ring on his finger when he leads the charge into hell.”

The ring only worked for humans. I didn’t think even halfbloods could harness its magic, which was the only reason Nicky Agnelli didn’t move heaven and earth to get his hands on it. Good idea to keep that part of the story secret, I figured. Just in case.

“So what’s he going to do about it?” I asked.

“He’s thinking about a trade. He offers to dive down into hell and snatch this Gilles guy for Lauren, and she gives him the ring. Everybody’s happy. He’s still feeling her out, though, trying to find out if it’d be worth his time.”

I rested the gun butt on one bent knee, thinking things over.

“All right,” I said. “Here’s how this is going to go down. You’ve got a fourth boss now. Me. And I’m the only one who counts. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing, don’t draw suspicion, but if Lauren or Sullivan so much as sneeze funny, I want to know about it. That goes double for Agent Black, if you think the task force is gearing up to make arrests instead of just shaking trees.”

He glanced anxiously toward the DVD near his leg, like it might spring from its plastic case and bite him.

“Oh,” I added, “in case you’re thinking about bushwhacking me? Don’t. My friends made at least three copies. I vanish, I die, I develop a bad flu, copies go to Agent Black by overnight mail. My friends are under instructions not to tell me where they’re hiding them, so you can’t get the information out of me, no matter what.”