Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(92)

“Give it up,” I said softly. “Come on, Ben. It’s over. It’s time to show a little dignity and face the music.”

I approached the closet, ready for a fight. I wasn’t ready for him to burst from his hiding place in the shadows behind the bed, screaming like a madman, throwing himself onto my back. I forced myself up and stumbled backward, trying to run him into a wall, but he had his arm locked around my throat in a sleeper hold. I pushed against him, straining to breathe, and fell against the vanity. It hit him in the spine, hard, and he let go with a grunt of pain. I wheeled around fast, but I didn’t have time to throw my card. He ran for the door, and straight into Emma.

“Please,” Ben blubbered. “Please, Emma, just let me go. You don’t have to do this, just let me go—”

I could see the sorrow in her eyes as she gently brushed his hair aside and kissed his brow.

Then she snapped his neck.

Ben’s corpse tumbled to the floor. Emma sank to her knees beside him, mute. She brushed her fingertips along his lifeless arm.

If this was an action movie, that would have been her cue to say something badass. But this wasn’t a movie. It was just a stupid dead man and a grieving widow and a gulf of pain I couldn’t imagine. She opened her mouth and let out a long, keening cry that rose to a wail as she pounded her fists against her legs. As she broke into sobs, leaning her head against Ben’s chest, I saw Melanie appear in the doorway.

“No, hey,” I said, moving fast to get between them and take Melanie by the shoulders, ushering her out into the hall. “You don’t need to see this. You don’t need to remember him like that.”

She looked up at me. “Is he…?”

“It’s over,” I said, and pulled her into a hug. She let me. She stayed there for a while, close in my arms, while her mother howled in the next room.

“Come on,” I said. “Your mom’s going to need you, but…not right now. I don’t think she’d want you to see him like that either.”

Melanie walked with me to the door.

“I don’t think I can cry right now,” she said. “I want to. I feel like I should, but…I can’t.”

“That’s okay. Maybe you’ll feel like it tomorrow. Or maybe you won’t. Grieving is like that.”

She stopped and gave me a look.

“My dad was a good man,” she said, as if sorting it out in her head. “He just made bad decisions.”

“The world is full of good men who make bad decisions,” I told her. “Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. You just have to figure things out the best you can. Make the best choices you can. Choices you can live with.”

“I’m going to go help the others. Those new guys, they’re gonna be pretty shell-shocked. Then I’ll check on Mom.”

I ruffled her hair. “Good thinking. You’re gonna be fine, Melanie.”

She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite get there.

“You sure about that?” she said.

“Trust me. I’m a magician.”

I found Caitlin ten feet from where I’d left her. She sat on a stack of drywall, using it for an impromptu bench. She leaned over her broken leg, massaging it, murmuring under her breath as she winced.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up and gave me a tired smile.

“Hey yourself. Sit. Keep me company.”

I settled down beside her, wiping away some dust from the drywall with the edge of my hand.

“How’s the leg?”

“Hurts, but I’m already healing it. I’ll be up and limping in a few hours. I landed on it deliberately, had to make myself look helpless.” She glanced towards the ranch house. “Ben?”

“Dead. Emma did it. I think it’d be good if nobody told Melanie that. They’re going to have enough problems recovering from all this.”

“Agreed,” she said, and we contemplated the pit of stone in silence.

“Is Sullivan dead down there?”

She shrugged. “Probably. We can take a lot of punishment, but being crushed under ten tons of rubble isn’t anything you bounce back from. If he isn’t dead, he wishes he were. And he can keep wishing. For a very, very long time. Tomorrow morning we’re paving it over.”

I nodded. Sounded fair to me.

“So was it worth it?” she asked.

“What?”

She waved her hand idly. “All of this. Giving up the ring. Giving up a chance at…I don’t know.”

I leaned close, and she rested her head on my shoulder.

“I’ve got everything I could ever want,” I said. “Right here.”

We sat like that for a while, as dawn broke over the endless sand.

Every choice has consequences. Some you see coming, and some hit you right between the eyes when you least expect it. I knew the time would come when I’d have to pay the piper for everything I’d done, and for everything I didn’t do. I was okay with that.

Let the heavens war. Let the world fall down. Caitlin and me, we were doing all right.





Epilogue


He supposed things had worked out just fine.

Father Alvarez hummed a happy tune as he dusted the bookshelves in his office at Our Lady of Consolation. A ragged quartet of cambion had let him go at dawn, grim-faced and silent as they bundled him into their truck. They wouldn’t say where Sullivan or their other brethren were, but he could guess from their expressions that it wasn’t a happy story. They dropped him off at the church and drove east into an uncertain future. Now he was back at the church as if he had never left, like Alice stepping back out of the looking glass.