The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(76)

I tried to talk. My lips wanted to go the wrong way, and I felt myself drool a little.

“Bob,” I slurred, “what’re you doing?”

“Now the poisoned fruit of what we did has blossomed on the vine. Your sins always come back to haunt you, Mr. Faust. I’ve learned that much. No matter how far or fast you run, your sins always come back. So I’m done running. These people have to be stopped, and I will stop them. I told you the truth. I’ve found a way to turn this creature of entropy into a weapon.”

He picked up the hacksaw, staring glassy-eyed as he ran a fingertip over the blade’s jagged teeth.

“To do that, though, the creature needs a stable vessel. That means I need to commit one last sin. I hope you can forgive me.”

My body was numb. I tried to get up again, to at least push back with my feet and squirm away from him, but the best I could do was flop around on the cold concrete floor.

“The process is simple,” he said, “if…unpleasant for the vessel. It’s essentially like an involuntary demonic possession. You are familiar with demonic possession, Mr. Faust?”

A wave of raw panic slapped me across the face and shoved my head under icy water. I felt myself plummet into a black abyss dragging me back to my teenage years. Yeah, I was familiar with demonic possession. The drug coursing through my veins hauling me through flashes of stark memory, forcing me to feel it all over again. Creatures of toxic waste burrowed like maggots in my brain, pissing behind my eyeballs, scratching bone, and carving filthy graffiti inside my skull.

Bob came closer. This time, I managed to kick. I swung my feet out, stomping air, fighting him with everything I had. He stepped back with ease and held up his hands.

“See?” he said. “This is why I had to drug you. I knew you’d try to stop me, but this has to be done. It has to. I hope you’re understanding my words. I’m explaining this so that you’ll grasp what’s happening here.”

Bob walked out of sight. I lay there, watching the tornado of smoke.

He came back and crouched before me. Something shone like a diamond in his hand, jangling in front of my eyes.

“Still with me?” he said. “These are the keys to my car. It’s parked around back.”

He set the keys on the tray, next to the other tools. I squinted.

“Why?” I managed to say. “Why’re you tellin’ me?”

He walked toward the binding circle and turned back to face me.

“So that you can get back home, when your part of the work is done,” he said.

Tears glistened in his eyes. They took on halos of light in my confused vision, glimmering like drops of silver.

Now I understood.

“In the end,” Bob said, “we all get what we deserve.”

Then he stepped into the circle.





Thirty-Seven



The smoke screamed.

One of the Klieg lights dangling from the rafters exploded, showering glass and sparks onto the concrete below. Bob’s body hung a foot above the ground, mouth wide, eyes bulging, wrapped and bound in tendrils of raw hate. Now he was screaming too, in ear-piercing harmony.

The smoke dove down his throat. The screaming stopped.

The smoke buried itself inside him, pouring in through his mouth, his nostrils, the corners of his eyes, anywhere it could tear open a foothold. As the last wisp of gray entered him, he collapsed to the floor.

Then he sat bolt upright.

His skin bulged and swelled, as if the smoke had been lured inside and now it wanted back out again. The glyphs inked onto his body glistened.

Warding and containment is my specialty, Bob had said. I know how to keep my skin intact. It was his final spell: turning himself into a living trap.

He seemed to move in stop motion. Fast, jittery, jumping from point to point and skipping the spaces in between. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long, shiny needle and a spool. Sparks of enchantment flew from his fingers as he threaded the black mortician’s thread through the needle’s eye. I could smell the warding spell he’d prepared, taste it, like copper pennies on my tongue.

He slid the needle through his lips.

I watched, frozen and limp, as Bob sealed himself up. He finished his lips, then moved on to his eyelids, stitching them shut in tight little rows of thread.

All the while, the smoke raged inside him. I heard Bob’s ribs crack and splinter as it pounded him from within, saw the blood leaking from under his fingernails and his stitched-shut eyelids. He didn’t make a single sound. He was beyond pain now. Beyond anything but the task at hand.

The color drained from his skin, then the moisture. Bob convulsed, his muscles cramping and seizing. He looked more desiccated with every fevered beat of my heart.

When the rite was done, the thing that remained on the floor, curled into a fetal position at the heart of the binding circle, looked like an unwrapped mummy.

I think I passed out. Wasn’t sure. The drugs in my system turned time into a question with no answers. All I remembered was the pounding headache and the dry cottony feeling in my mouth when I could finally move again. My vision was still a little blurry, but the trails of light were gone.

I pushed myself up and used the edge of a bench for support, getting my legs back. Once I was good to walk, I hobbled over to the circle. The hacksaw and blowtorch waited on the rolling cart. I knew what my part of the job was now.