The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(94)

The door swung open at a touch. The apartment beyond, lights doused and the windows plastered over with sheets of brown butcher paper, was a forest of dangling bones. Tiny bones, Angelo thought, birds and squirrels. The dirty bone mobiles hung bound together by strips of twine, configured into stars and cubes and strange spiral ladders. He dodged around them as they stepped inside, his shoulder bumping one ornate design and making it spin in the stifling, humid air.

“Boss,” Sal whispered and nudged his back. Angelo followed his gaze. A naked corpse lay upon the kitchen table, butchered almost beyond recognition. Mason jars piled up in a miniature pyramid at its side, each one filled with a few inches of congealed blood.

A tired voice sounded from the open bedroom doorway.

“There was an instrument once, the Black Eye, forged by a cult of silence. They say that if you wore it, the gods themselves were blinded to your presence. My version is…impermanent. Needs cambion blood to feed the sigil. Caught a cambion, but as you can see, I used him up.”

Sal gave Angelo a leery glance. Angelo cleared his throat and turned to face the doorway.

“My name is Angelo Mancuso. I represent a very distinguished organization based out of Chicago—”

“I know who you are.”

A ragged shadow moved in the dark, shambling closer.

“We’re about to embark on a business project,” Angelo said. “And I’m looking for recruits. I need…skilled hands. Specialists.”

As the figure stepped into sight, his funeral suit hanging loose on his malnourished frame, he reached up to adjust his dusty bow tie.

“I believe you mean,” Damien Ecko hissed, “freaks.”

Angelo held up his hands, pinned by Ecko’s mad gaze.

“I mean no disrespect.”

Ecko’s lips pulled back in a death’s-head grin.

“Disrespect?” he said. “And how could I, surrounded by such luxury, living such a life of grand indulgence, possibly feel disrespected by anyone? I am simply on top of the world. The butler should be around shortly, with caviar for everyone.”

“I heard a little about what happened,” Angelo said. “Pack of crooks from Vegas hit your house, right? They didn’t just rob you; they burned you down. Didn’t leave you with a pot to piss in.”

Ecko chuckled, a rasping sound that sent a chill down Angelo’s spine.

“Oh, they did far worse than that. I’m a hunted man. But as long as I stay behind my sigils, they can’t find me. You…don’t have any cambion blood, do you?”

“Come work for me,” Angelo said. “We’re taking a little road trip, and we’re gonna hit Vegas hard. You want payback against the people who stuck you in this shithole? Sign up with me, I guarantee you’ll get it.”

Ecko wavered on his feet, eyes gleaming. He let out a tittering laugh.

“Faust,” he whispered. He grinned at Angelo. “Yes. I would be delighted to aid your…amusing little dreams of conquest. I’ll merely need one thing from you first.”

“Name it.”

“Access to a city morgue,” Ecko replied. “If we’re taking a road trip, I want to bring lots of new friends along.”