The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(68)

“Tell me about the ring,” I said and tried not to shrink under the sudden, ferocious weight of Caitlin’s glare. I held up a hand. “Nicky’s seer babbled about a ring Lauren has, something she uses as a tool. She’s also got the ability to bind demons with nothing but her own willpower, which is supposed to be impossible. I put two and two together.”

“You shouldn’t have. I told you, that knowledge is worth—”

“My life, right, I know what you said. But that was then and this is now. Cait…I trust you. Can you trust me?”

She stared at me for a long moment, her gaze softening, then finally shook her head with a sigh of resignation. “All right. But this goes no further. I mean that. It stays with you and it dies with you. If word of what she possesses leaked, there would be a bloodbath like you’ve never imagined.”

I leaned closer to her, blinking. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Ever read the 1,001 Arabian Nights? Do you know the legend of King Solomon’s temple?”

“Sure. Solomon was commissioned by angels to build a temple for storing the Ark of the Covenant. He was offered any payment he could imagine, but he only asked for wisdom. To reward his humility, he was granted magic powers and a ring that could…” My voice trailed off as I realized what she was saying. “You have got to be f*cking kidding me.”

“A ring that could command demons,” Caitlin said.

“But that’s just a legend, isn’t it?”

“Legends take on lives of their own,” she said. “Did it actually belong to Solomon? I don’t think so. The first reports about it in hell’s archives date back to Emperor Constantine’s day, far too late. No idea who made it or how, and it has the most damnable habit of slipping in and out of history before we can get our claws on it. The bottom line is, it’s here, it works, and Lauren Carmichael has it.”

“If word got out to the occult underground,” I said, shaking my head. “Christ, it’s the ultimate prize. We’d have hex-slingers flying in from the other side of the world to take a shot at getting their hands on that thing. Mages would be killing each other in the streets. A bloodbath doesn’t begin to describe it.”

She nodded. “Now add to that what my people would do in the name of survival. That ring is perhaps the greatest weapon ever placed in humanity’s grasp. We have no defense against it, no refuge from enslavement at its owner’s hands. Imagine how frightening that is for us. We don’t respond well to being frightened, Daniel. Not well at all.”

“It’s a goddamned weapon of mass destruction is what it is. A nuke in a signet ring.” I shook my head. “I hate to say it, but you’re right. Nobody can know about this. What really worries me is that Carmichael’s playing a long game. She’s not drunk on power. The ring’s just another tool to her, a means to an end.”

“There are few things more dangerous than a zealot with discipline,” Caitlin mused, sipping her ginger ale.

? ? ?

My hands clenched against the wheel of our rental car as I pulled into the visitor parking lot past a polished granite sign reading Napa State Hospital. It looked like a college campus with a splash of barbed wire.

“You all right?” Caitlin asked as we walked toward the entrance. I hadn’t realized my tension was showing.

“When I was a kid,” I started to say, then shook my head. “I just don’t like places like this.”

Inside, it could have been any hospital in the world, with attentive orderlies and wide, clean halls. Still, a sense of lingering sadness clung to the bricks, the strange sick smell of frustration and mental decay. I wasn’t sure if it was the weight of over a century of madness, festering and breeding in the shadows, or just my own personal demons reminding me they were never far away.

We’d called ahead. I thought we might have to pull some kind of a scam, talk our way past the front desk or worse, break in under cover of night, but Dr. Planck was on the “approved for visitors” list. All we had to do was ask. There was still the chance that he’d refuse to see us, but something told me he’d want an audience.

The visitor center reminded me of a nicer county jail. Warm colors, sunny windows, and the constant reminder that your every move was being watched. Caitlin stored her handbag in a locker, along with my wallet and keys, and we walked through a metal detector. We waited in pensive silence until an orderly brought Planck in to see us.

Draped in a beige gown, his snowy-white hair cascading over his bloodshot eyes, Eugene Planck was a dead man walking. His heavily lined face turned curiously toward us as he hobbled over to the table. At first I thought they’d brought us the wrong patient. According to what Caitlin had dug up, he should have been in his fifties, but this man had to have been pushing eighty. Caitlin and I shared a glance, thinking the same thing: he looked like someone had sucked years of his life out through his pores, leaving nothing but a withered husk behind.

“Dr. Planck,” I said, rising to my feet. “Thank you for seeing us.”

He favored us with a tired smile, sitting down on the other side of the table. “Nobody’s called me doctor in a very long time,” he rasped. His voice was raw and his words forced their way out on a strangled wheeze. I remembered what Caitlin had told me about his first suicide attempt—guzzling down acid to burn the parasite in his stomach. “Nobody’s come to visit me, either. A rare surprise.”