The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(52)
“Candi—” Spengler said, finally pushing the mannequin away and crawling back on the carpet. His pistol lay abandoned a few feet away. The mannequin twitched. “Those are her clothes. What did you do to her?”
My vision cleared. Tony hovered by the door, looking nervous, and Sheldon Kaufman stood at Lauren’s shoulder like the grim reaper come to call. A pair of cards still nestled in my palm. I could take two of these bastards down, if I used them just right, but then I’d have to deal with the other two. I held my move and kept the cards out of sight.
Lauren looked down at him. “Your whore is dead, Mr. Spengler. Necessary for Ms. Brand’s little jest to work, I’m afraid, but no great loss to society. You may or may not join her in the next few minutes, depending on how cooperative you are.”
“Fuck you!” Spengler screamed, lunging for the gun. He grabbed it and swung it up, aiming for Lauren’s head. Suddenly he shrieked as his wrist snapped backward, as if twisted in the gears of some horrible invisible machine. Bones cracked like dry twigs. The gun fell from his convulsing fingers, too far away for me to reach.
This all ends tonight, I’d told Caitlin. Somehow this wasn’t the ending I’d been hoping for.
Twenty-Six
“Remember me, lover-boy?” Meadow asked Spengler with a satisfied smile. Clutching his destroyed wrist and biting back another scream, he looked up at her with sudden recognition.
“You—” was all he managed to say, his breath strained.
“We knew he’d gotten to the Box just ahead of our people,” Meadow explained, looking down at me, “but not how he was shipping it or where it would be. Your friend and I met at an airport bar in Atlanta the night he came back from Saudi Arabia, thanks to a carefully planned coincidence. He was waiting for a connecting flight. I was waiting for him. We got tipsy, and then I let him ‘convince’ me to bring him up to my hotel room. Such a pick-up artist.”
She showed me the poppet in her hand. Just a tiny wax doll, wrapped in colored threads, a clump of real hair pinned to its head. Just a wax doll with a snapped-off wrist.
“I would have settled for a little hair and a drop of spittle,” she said to Spengler, “but by sunrise I had samples of all your vital fluids, didn’t I? Makes the poppet so much stronger.”
I bent my knee back, getting ready to jump up and make a move. Sheldon’s gaze darted towards me.
“I’d stay down if I were you,” Sheldon advised. Tony just hovered by the broken door, looking like there were a thousand other places he’d rather be.
Lauren circled the room, pausing to admire one of the paintings.
“Is this an original Matisse?” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Spengler. “You have exquisite taste.”
He held his wrist, rocking forward and back, groaning. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
“Simple,” she said, “we want the Etruscan Box. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t opposed to the idea of paying for it, but your little auction has three weeks to go, and our timetable is a bit tighter than that. Where is it, please?”
“Screw you. I’m not telling you anyth—”
Spengler’s words erupted in a piercing shriek as his leg snapped at the knee, doubling inward, his toes pressing against his hip. Jagged bone jutted from a tear in his kimono, and blood soaked the beige carpet in a spreading ring. Meadow smiled serenely as she slowly ground the wax doll’s leg to mush under her fingertips.
“It’s in his safe room!” I shouted. “I’ll show you, just leave him alone!”
“Damn it, Dan,” Spengler whimpered, tears flooding down his cheeks as he writhed on the carpet. “Don’t tell them shit.”
“It’s not worth it. I’m sorry, it’s not worth you dying over it.” I looked to Lauren. “His safe room is in the study, behind a bookshelf. We left the door open. The box is in a crate against the back wall.”
Lauren smiled. “Now you see? That’s what I like. Reasonable and succinct. Ms. Brand?”
Meadow shrugged and dropped the poppet to the floor, discarded.
Then she stomped on it.
Spengler died in a spray of blood and splintered bone. I howled like an animal, scrambling to my feet and hurling one of my palmed cards. It whipped through the air, crackling with pale blue lightning, and sliced into Meadow’s face. I turned just as Sheldon lunged forward. He threw a punch from five feet away. A shockwave lanced from the end of his fist, streaking toward me and slamming me in the jaw with the force of a phantom heavyweight. The accountant spun his fists in a graceful circle. They trailed shimmering patterns like twin heat mirages.
“Forsaken Hand style,” he said. “Learned it in China.”
He spun on his heel and lashed out with his foot. I was ready this time. I flipped my other card in the air and cast a shield charm, the jack of diamonds hovering in the path of his oncoming blow. The spells clashed with a grating squeal and a shower of black sparks. Sheldon fell back and clutched his foot like he’d just rammed his toes into a brick wall.
I dove for the fallen cards. Lauren uttered a litany of sibilant words under her breath, a chant that became a literal serpentine hiss as she blazed toward me, leaving the impression of glossy green scales in her wake. A blinding pain seared my neck. My muscles seized up with agonizing cramps that left me convulsing on my back.