The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(25)

I stopped in my tracks. I grabbed her arm and made her stop too, turning her toward me.

“I don’t believe in ‘chosen ones,’” I told her. “I don’t believe in fate, and I sure as f*ck don’t believe in rolling over and dying when I can fight instead. Tell me how to beat him.”

She studied me for a long minute, looking deep in my eyes.

“Perhaps,” she said, “all hope is not yet lost. I understand my twin is imprisoned. Another of the Enemy’s machinations, no doubt.”

“That’s right.”

“The Prophet’s voice must be heard,” she said. “For there to be the slimmest chance of success, his truth must reach the right ears. Will you be his liberator?”

“Wait,” I said. “I thought you said you were the Prophet.”

“I was, the last time around. But this story is over—this world is over—and the mantle is his to bear.” She paused. “Mine to bear, technically.”

“So you and Buddy…are the same person?”

She spread her hands. “What you’re seeing has already come to pass. I’m told we met in the prison yard. Will meet, for me. Met, for you. See? Time complicates things. Throw out your clocks. Learn to think sideways, while you’re liberating the Prophet’s voice.”

“Just to be clear on this: you’re asking me to bust Buddy out of prison?”

She nodded, grave. I took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll find a way. Somehow.”

“But understand this: by whimsy or spite, the Enemy has swept you up into his grand design. If you thwart his plans, he will come for you. Your death will not be a merciful one.”

“He’ll have to find me first,” I said. “I’ve got a little magic of my own.”

She chuckled at me.

“And there you fail. You see, your magic can only change what things are. His magic can change why things are.”

Thump.

The ground shook under our feet. A single, sharp jolt, and a booming sound that reverberated through the ruins. Then another.

Thump.

Cassandra sighed. She looked up to the shattered skyline.

“My final prophecy,” she said. “I always knew I was going to die today.”

Thump.

Then I glimpsed it. The shadow of a shape, just out of sight behind the leaning corpse of the Taipei Tower. The shape that slowly lurched forward, making the ground shiver with every thunderous step.

A shape at least thirty stories tall.

“Come on.” I tugged at Cassandra’s shoulder. “Come on, we have to run—”

“We?” Her voice was placid. Tired. Resigned. “I told you, this is my home, not yours. You’re not even really here. You’re just watching from afar. A voyeur at the end of the world next door.”

She pulled her shoulder away.

“Now go,” she said, turning her back on me. “I’m meant to die alone. We must all fulfill our part of the story. As we shall, again and again, until the last world dies and sets us free.”

*

I lay on the concrete floor of Buddy’s cell, flat on my back, head throbbing. Driblets of his foul concoction on my lips, the aftertaste coating my fuzzy tongue like a layer of paint. Empty plastic cup in my outstretched hand.

Buddy crouched over me, wide-eyed.

“I don’t remember how I got here,” I mumbled.

He offered me his hand. “The same way you left.”

I got to my feet, legs wobbly, and spat into the stainless-steel toilet. It didn’t help. Buddy took the cup from me and pressed a warm can of Coke into my hand. I popped the tab and chugged it down.

“Did she explain?” he asked.

I wiped my hand across the back of my mouth.

“Too damn little, but apparently you’ve got an important message to deliver.” I gave him the side-eye. “Do you, uh, know what the message is, and where it goes?”

“I will.” He tapped his ear. “The machinery of the universe will tell me. Radio Free Buddy is on the air, twenty-four seven.”

“I don’t suppose the ‘machinery of the universe’ has a plan for getting you out of here?”

He tilted his head, listening to voices I couldn’t hear. Then he nodded, smiling bright.

“Yes,” he said. “You.”

Everybody’s a comedian.

Bad enough I had to find my own way out of the Iceberg, but now I had a tagalong. A tagalong who might be vital to saving the world. A world that, just an hour ago, I didn’t even know was in danger.

That was assuming, of course, I could believe anything I’d just seen. Assuming that it wasn’t some elaborate hallucination caused by an overdose of bad prison wine. For that matter, “Cassandra” might have been more lucid than Buddy, but she didn’t seem much more sane.

Still, I couldn’t deny what had happened to me. Somebody had carved me out of my life and shoved me inside a prison, thanks to a mind hex that affected not only me but, well, everybody. There was power, and then there was power on a scale I’d never seen before. Cassandra’s claim that I’d been swapped out with “the Thief,” whoever the hell that was, made as much sense as any theory I could come up with on my own.