Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(45)
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 f*cking 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
Sitri 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.
“Charley swore this was 24-karat,” he muttered. “He might know meth purity, but he doesn’t know shit about gold.”