The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(71)

The world shifted around us again, canvas flaps dropping over the sky and a card table laden with maps boiling up from the dirt. The Australian paced the tent, wild-eyed, barely able to control himself.

“Just take it slow,” Eugene told him. “One thing at a time.”

“We can’t leave,” the Australian said, squeezing his hands at his sides. “I’m telling you, I took the road out of camp and drove for fifteen minutes through the jungle. Ended up coming back into camp. I didn’t turn, not once. Did it again. Ended up back in camp. I spent eight hours driving the same five miles of road. I’m telling you, Doctor, something is keeping us penned in here. It’s killing us off one by one, and it won’t let us go!”

“It’s impossible. The jungle must have confused you. It’s easy to get turned around—”

The Australian slammed his fist against the table. “We’re going to die here. You know why. That bird of yours. You’ve heard the whispers. You know what people’ve seen, what that girl’s been doing at night. You just don’t want to believe it. We’re all going to die here, and it’ll be your damn fault.”

Eugene’s shoulders shook. I stepped closer and saw the tears on his cheeks.

“He’s right,” he told us. “It was my fault.”

“No,” Caitlin said. “It was hers.”

Night again, and we followed Eugene out of the tent. Half the camp lay barren now, the wind blowing ragged tent flaps wide. Fat brown snakes coiled on empty cots. They hissed lazily as we walked by. In the distance, a man’s shrill scream pierced the night and, just as suddenly, fell silent.

At the edge of the clearing stood a small pavilion built from the scavenged bits and pieces of half a dozen tents. The pavilion was sprawling and shapeless, and a faint droning sound echoed from inside like a tuneless chant in a long-dead tongue. An oriental rug lined the floor at the entrance, caked with sand and dirt. As we followed Eugene inside, we heard the clinking of glasses and faint, conversational laughter.

A human torso, crudely butchered, lay across a glass table with its innards still wet and glistening. Lauren sat beside it, dressed in her Sunday best and sipping tea from a delicate porcelain cup. A man in a dapper black suit sat across from her. His face was a featureless black void, a smudge of frozen smoke.

“Eugene!” Lauren said. “You’re just in time for high tea.”

“Abelard,” Eugene gasped, obviously in shock, “says he can’t leave the camp. He says the road—”

“Right, we can’t let anyone leave. Obviously. Mr. Gray, would you please do something about that pesky man?”

The black void buzzed, and the suited man hoisted his teacup emphatically. He spoke in the droning voice of a thousand flies’ wings.

“Fanciful! I will snatch his nails!”

The man’s words sounded like a parody of English, strings of text run through a computer translator and back again. Still, nonsensical as it was, there was no mistaking his gleefully malicious tone.

“Can’t you remember his face?” Caitlin asked. Halfway submerged in the memory, Planck looked at us and shook his head.

“I do remember,” he said. “That was his face.”

Another faceless man, garbed in the sash and gown of an old-time British boarding-school teacher, stood beside a chalkboard. He rapped his pointer against a sketch, drawing attention to a chalk drawing of what could only be the Etruscan Box. Runes surrounded the Box, a swirling chaos of incomprehensible letters that tugged at my eyes.

“To open the Box without the requisite sacrifice,” buzzed the faceless teacher, “invites the wrath of its guardians.”

The seated man waved his teacup, splashing amber droplets on the rug. “They are lean and athirst! They chew on gumption!”

“The number of souls is five, no more and no less. This is the key and the cost to open Belephaia’s prison. The ring will render her docile and pliant.”

Caitlin’s jaw dropped. She grabbed Planck’s shoulder.

“Repeat that! What did he say? Are you sure you remember it correctly?”

The room flickered and skipped as time ran in reverse. My stomach lurched.

“—is the key and the cost to open Belephaia’s prison,” the teacher said again, and Caitlin spat an oath in her native tongue. I touched the small of her back, frowning.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “Hold on. This is bad. I need to think.”

The teacher rapped his pointer against the chalkboard for emphasis. “It will not be long before her brother, the demon prince Sitri, comes to her rescue. You must bind them both, quickly. Only then shall your desires be made flesh.”

“Lauren,” Eugene pleaded, lost in his memory, “what are you doing? This is wrong, it has to stop.”

She shook her head, rising slowly from her chair.

“Oh, Eugene. There’s a new day coming, love. A bright and shining new day, and it’s all because of me. I should get rid of you, but…it just wouldn’t be the same without you there to see it. I want you to share my triumph.”

“This is insane!” he stammered.

“No. The world as you know it is insane. What you see here is just a glimpse of the sanity to come. We have a problem now, love. I won’t kill you—I can’t—but I can’t let you talk about this either.”