The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(72)

“If we might suggest,” the faceless teacher droned, “it poses an excellent opportunity to bond with your children.”

The seated man tilted his smoky void toward Planck. “Your lover is a mother, yet you are not a father. Cuckold.”

Lauren raised her hands. The skin of her arms pulsed and rippled, a dozen fat worms burrowing and digging under her flesh.

“It will be over quickly, love. I’m just going to put something inside of you. The less you struggle, the easier it will be.”

Planck stumbled backward, tripped, and landed flat on his back. I felt his surging fear in my own chest, the memory feeding upon itself and intensifying. The buzzing laughter of the faceless men echoed in my ears, louder and louder, driving out everything but sheer animal panic.

“Caitlin!” I shouted. “Cut him loose. It’s too much! End it!”

Light, brilliant and agonizing, flared behind my eyelids and the world exploded. I woke, jerking bolt upright in the motel bed, caked in a sheen of ice-cold sweat. Caitlin tugged on jeans and a silk blouse as she hissed tangled words under her breath. She moved like a hurricane on a mission.

“What is it?” I said. “That name, you recognized it.”

“I know what she’s after now. I know what Lauren’s trying to pull off, even if she doesn’t. She has no idea what they’ve tricked her into doing.”

“What?”

Caitlin turned to look at me, her face a mask etched in steel.

“Jump-start the apocalypse.”





Thirty-Six



“The universe has laws. Immutable, undebatable,” Caitlin said as she finished getting dressed. “You drop an apple, it falls down, not up. Drop a million, a million fall.”

“Right,” I said, “physics. I get that.”

“The occult world is no less legalistic. Names have power. Contracts bind. A web of pacts and treaties, ancient beyond measure, thread their way through the universe.”

“You’re gonna have to help me out here.”

“Long story short,” Caitlin said, her voice fierce, “that creature last walked the Earth when your kind were still living in caves and figuring out that fire is hot. It couldn’t be destroyed, so my prince, along with his compatriots, bound it in a prison. It shouldn’t have been left in this world for humans to find. It couldn’t have been.”

I thought back to my first glimpse of the Box, how utterly sinister and alien it had felt. I remembered my sudden and sure knowledge that the creature inside utterly despised me and had all eternity to stew in its own hatred.

Caitlin turned on her phone and hit the speed dial. After a short pause she rattled off the motel’s address and growled into the receiver, “It’s me. Send a car. Now. I’ll need a conduit and an audience with the prince within the hour. One minute later and I’ll feed you your own skin one ragged strip at a time.”

She hung up without another word and said, “Those creatures, the smoke-faced men, whatever they were, they lied to Lauren. Prince Sitri is not Belephaia’s brother. The two of them are bound by ancient vows of Nemesis. If Belephaia is freed, if she sets one toe on Earth, my prince is obligated to travel here and face her in mortal combat. Even he, powerful as he is, must abide by the laws of the universe. If she emerges from that casket, he has to come and fight.”

“But why lie? Lauren’s going to use the ring to bind both of them under her power, so what difference does it make why Sitri is coming?”

Caitlin shook her head, pacing the room.

“No, no, no. Daniel, you don’t understand. The ring won’t work on her. Belephaia isn’t a demon. She’s an angel.”

My mouth went dry as the Mohave at high noon.

“There’s an angel,” I said, “in the Box? Wait, isn’t that a good thing?”

“If there’s a glimmer of hope in your heart,” Caitlin snapped, “I suggest you extinguish it. Better yet, allow me the pleasure. Belephaia is a scourge. A firebrand. A destroyer of the wicked and sinful.”

“A war angel.”

“All angels are war angels. She, though, is one of a kind. Destruction is her only purpose, her only thought and desire. Oh, and her benchmarks for ‘naughty’ and ‘nice’ aren’t exactly calibrated to human standards. There isn’t a soul on this planet who isn’t guilty and deserving of annihilation in her eyes. No woman, no man, no child.”

I rubbed my forehead, the implications setting in.

“And Lauren is going to unleash this thing in the heart of Sin City,” I groaned. “And then Sitri’s going to show up looking for a brawl. How much damage are we talking about here? What’s the best-case scenario?”

“Best case would be a swift victory for my prince, and even then, he’ll be celebrating in the heart of a nuclear storm. When their powers clash, nothing will be left standing. We’ll be lucky if they don’t turn the entire western seaboard into glass.”

“They’re that powerful?”

“You can’t even imagine.” Caitlin paced the floor, shaking her head. “Oh, but that’s just the beginning. There are compacts. Treaties that must never be broken. This world is…what’s the best way to put it? A demilitarized zone. Everyone protects their interests in a quiet, low-key sort of way, but open conflict on the scale those two would bring? All bets are off.”