The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(56)

“You’ll die here!” it shrieked, coming around again with its jaws wide enough to swallow me whole. “Die, die, di—”

I crouched and brought the sword up in one swift, brutal thrust. The glass blade punched through the serpent’s lower jaw and jutted out the top of its head. Streams of black blood flooded its eyes as it screamed, its lacerated tail slamming the cathedral walls.

Light. Candlelight. Cold. Too many sensations, too many images flooded me at once, the mindscape torn away like ripping a painting from its frame.

I was awake.

Candles burned on the stainless-steel tables of a morgue. Red and white wax dripped down mirrored cabinets. I lay naked on a hospital gurney, sweating, skin covered in glyphs in flowing white paint. Unspeakable nausea seized my stomach and I rolled, the gurney tipping, sending me sprawling on all fours on the frigid tile floor.

My throat filled, something cutting off my air. Panic rose as my stomach heaved against the blockage. Pain tore through my esophagus. I clutched my neck, trying to force it up. Then I heard the frenzied hiss of a snake.

The head was the first thing to emerge. It whipped against my teeth and tongue, squeezing its way out between my lips. Then it slid free, launching out of my throat and spilling onto the floor, a swamp-green serpent nearly a foot long and covered in a sheen of bile and slime.

It darted away, slithering across the tile toward a floor drain, intent on escape. A machete came down with a jolting clang, slicing the snake in half and spattering the morgue floor with steaming black blood.

Mama Margaux held up her blade to the light and frowned. “Never seen that happen before.”

I gasped for breath, panting, slowly coming back to my senses. I looked around the room. Bentley, Corman, and Jennifer stood around the morgue, staring at me with various looks of astonishment and relief.

“Hi guys,” I said, my throat raw and raspy. “Can I… Get some clothes, maybe?”

Jennifer handed me my shirt. The sweat and smeared body paint made it cling to my skin. My muscles ached like I’d just run a marathon.

“Let’s face it, sugar,” Jennifer drawled, “I think we’ve all seen you naked one time or another.”

“I hadn’t,” Margaux said as she wiped off her machete with a towel, then added with a mutter, “not that I’m complainin’.”

They’d pulled out all the stops. A binding circle around the gurney, etched with Celtic runes, was Jennifer’s style mixed with Corman’s ritualistic sensibilities. Bentley’s alchemy lab took up an entire run of shelves, pale steam still trickling from a neglected alembic, and the tracings on my hands were pure Haitian vodou. I only had one question.

“Why a morgue?” I finished getting dressed. A glimpse of my face and tangled hair in a stainless-steel reflection made me wince. I looked like ten miles of bad road.

“Closest place we could all get to, fast,” Margaux said. “Antoine said he’d keep everyone out of our hair while we worked. That boy stood me up on our last date. He owes me.”

“So do I,” I said, getting to my feet. “I owe all of you. I wouldn’t have survived without your help.”

“Horsefeathers,” Corman said, “you would have done the same for any of us. It’s what we do.”

“It’s who we are,” Bentley added.

My family of choice. I waved the four of them close. A morgue might be a weird place for a group hug, but it sure as hell felt good.

“They killed Spengler,” I said. “I couldn’t stop them. Tried my damnedest but—”

Corman shook his head. “We’ll get some payback. Just tell us what we’re up against, kiddo.”

I gave them the rundown, sparing the grisly details of Spengler’s murder. They got the gist of it.

“The Etruscan Box?” Bentley said. “He’d been chasing that old thing for years. A testament to the power of imagination and greed. The Box’s refusal to open is the only interesting thing about it, but that hasn’t stopped people from imagining all kinds of treasures just waiting to be found inside.”

I shook my head. “There’s something inside, but I don’t think it’s treasure. It felt sentient. Alien. Malevolent. Whatever is in that box, I think we’re all better off if it stays in there.”

“Ti moun fwonte grandi devan Baron,” Margaux said. “Some people just can’t keep themselves out of the frying pan. Baron Samedi had one eye on Spengler since the day he was born. Give that boy a nuclear bomb, he would’ve tried to sell it.”

Jennifer hopped up on a patch of open counter, her legs swinging. “These cowboys don’t seem to understand how we do things around here. Spengler was one of ours. I don’t rightly care what’s in the box or why they took it, but Spengler was one of ours, and there’s gotta be a reckonin’ for that.”

Nobody disagreed. A washbasin stood near the refrigerator racks, and I splashed handfuls of cold water across my face, trying to jump-start my exhausted brain. All the pieces of the puzzle were right in front of me. I just had to weave them together.

“Nicky’s seer said Lauren Carmichael’s been working on this for a long time,” I told them. “Whatever the Box is hiding, it’s big time, and she knows—or believes she knows—how to open it. She’s not worried about consequences or who she steps on, either. Whatever’s coming, it’ll make everything else irrelevant.”