The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(82)

“We’re here,” Bentley said on the other end of the line.

“Good,” I told him. “I’m putting us on a conference call. Dialing up Mama now.”

Margaux came on the line to the tune of distant drumbeats, a cacophony that swirled across the phone line and abruptly fell silent.

“Five minutes,” she said, her voice strained, and put her line on mute.

“Cormie’s meditating,” Bentley said. “He’ll be in a trance in no time, just a little rusty.”

“Don’t want to pressure anybody, but time’s not on our side here,” I said. I leaned against my car. We waited.

Jennifer looked over at me after a minute of pensive silence.

“So. Datin’ a succubus, huh?”

“Oh, we are not having this conversation right now,” I said.

“I’m just saying. I might’ve started looking for love on the fairer side of the street after we broke up, but at least I stayed inside my own species.”

“It just sort of happened.”

“Well,” she said, looking up at the Silverlode, “she seems all right. So far. Fair warning, if she messes with your head I’m gonna claw her eyes out.”

“Fairly noted,” I said. “And thanks.”

She looked at me with a smirk. “So, her lady parts, are they just like—”

Margaux’s return to the conference call saved me. She put us on speaker, the line crackling with staccato drumbeats and a strange, high-pitched and chaotic melody, like a flute playing inside a blender.

“The cause is true,” Margaux panted, “and the spirits have been paid. They’re gonna help.”

A wind blew across the parking lot, hot as steam, feeling like the breath of God on my back.

“Cormie’s there with you,” Bentley said. “He’s in the astral. He says the Silverlode—it’s like nothing he’s ever seen. He can’t even get near the edge of the tower, the wards are too thick.”

I nodded. “Roger that. We can see it too. Mama, are you sure your spirits can crack this piggy bank?”

“Like nitroglycerin. Don’t you doubt it, boy.”

The wind swirled around us. Hungry. Eager to fight.

“All right,” I said, “here’s how we play it. Jennifer blows the loading bay door. Mama, your boys take out the wards. Tell them to hit the outer layer and just keep plowing through until they come out the other side. Bentley, tell Corman to follow behind them as close as he can and warn us about any traps. Me and Jenny will bring up the rear.”

The C-4 really did look like a stick of butter, neatly wrapped in brown paper. So did the next brick she took from her trunk. And the next.

“How much did you get?” I asked.

She shrugged with a smile. “I called in some favors. Figured we might as well go all out on the shock and awe.”

Jennifer scrutinized the tall corrugated-metal door, sized for a truck, and stuck the clump of plastic explosive near the left seam. She fiddled with it for a moment, carefully shaping the putty, and stuck what looked like a spark plug into the middle of the mass. She set the next charge on the service door and walked around the corner to split the third brick of explosive between a pair of boarded-up windows.

I set the flower box on the hood of my car and untied the festive ribbon. Inside, nestled in a bed of crepe paper, lay my gift from Spengler’s safe room: his Benelli Nova Tactical, a sleek, black, pump-action shotgun with ghost-ring sights. I loaded four cartridges, feeding them in one at a time. I liked the idea of bringing Spengler’s gun on the raid. At least in spirit, the whole family would be together one last time.

Jennifer finished setting the charge and ran back to join me behind her car. She held up a detonator with a bright red, plastic squeeze-trigger.

“You ready for this?” She looked halfway between excitement and terror. I knew the feeling, my pulse racing as I readied for the charge. We’d win or we’d die tonight. No other options.

“Ready as I’m gonna be. Mama?”

“Just say the word,” Margaux whispered, her voice strained as she concentrated on her ritual. The drumbeats in the background quickened, echoing my pounding heart.

“Bentley and Corman?”

“Cormie’s astral body is floating about five feet above your heads,” Bentley said. “Says he’s fit as a fiddle and ready to go.”

I took a deep breath. The Silverlode loomed over us like a living thing, a hungry monster waiting to be fed. Or a dragon waiting to be slain.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s show these Seattle *s how we do things in Vegas. Jennifer?”

She held up the detonator. I nodded.

“Light ’em up!”





Forty-One



One click of the detonator, so fast her fingers blurred, and the alley erupted in a blast of crumpled metal and flame. Superheated air blew past us, flowing toward the black, billowing smoke like oxygen filling a sudden vacuum. Margaux’s horde of disembodied wraiths slammed into the outer wards at a hundred miles an hour. The clashing enchantments screamed inside my head, a discordant howl like iron fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Go!” I shouted, charging down the alley, cradling Spengler’s shotgun in my hands and keeping my head down. The loading-bay door crumpled inward, punched by a giant’s fist, edges of the torn metal blackened and smoking. I jumped through the gap and hit a small storage room. Its shelves were empty and caked with years of dust. The door lay just ahead.