The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(83)

“Wait!” Bentley shouted into my earpiece, just as my foot snagged a length of fishing line.

The trip wire snapped. The ceiling groaned. I hurled myself to the bare concrete floor, landing on my shoulder and rolling just as a scythe blade on a wooden arm swung across my path. Behind me, Jennifer stopped short, the vicious blade sweeping half an inch from her nose.

“Gonna need a little more advance warning than that,” I breathed. Jennifer’s face was pale.

“Sorry,” Bentley said. “Up ahead, just past the door, three more trip wires. Two low, one high.”

We didn’t have time to catch our breaths. I led the charge, jumping and ducking around the fishing line, emerging onto the silent casino floor. Only the emergency lights were on, casting row after row of dead slot machines in a pale cemetery glow. All we needed to do was cross the room, get through the connecting hallway, and reach the hotel lobby.

A broad avenue of antique scalloped carpet ran through the heart of the casino. Meadow Brand stood there, waiting for us.

“Lauren thought you left town,” she said. “I knew better.”

I came to a stop about ten feet away from her, Jennifer at my side.

“So you came to greet us?” I said. “Very considerate of you.”

Something moved in the shadows. A figure darted past in the corner of my eye, slipping between the slot machines, vanishing from sight. A moment later, something flickered in my peripheral vision on the other side of the room, too quick to catch.

Bentley’s worried voice came on the line. “You’ve got trouble. Cormie says you’re not alone in there. He can’t tell what they are. They just look like blobs on the astral, blobs of dark heat. They’re…artificial.”

“Mm-hmm,” I murmured for both his and Jennifer’s benefit, “and they’re flanking us. Also, that’s not Meadow Brand.”

“How do you know?” Jennifer whispered.

“Because last time I saw her, I carved her face open. Either she got the world’s best and fastest plastic surgery, or she’s just psychically projecting herself onto one of her puppets.”

I took a step closer. There was definitely something wrong with “Meadow.” Her movements were too jerky, her expression too uneven, too plastic.

“Last chance,” I told her. “I know you’re up there with the others. Don’t open the Box. It’s not what you think.”

She laughed. A harsh and bitter sound.

“It’s exactly what we think. Power. Raw, beautiful power. All we could ever want. In less than an hour, hell itself will eat out of our hands. And we’re just getting started.”

“Daniel,” Bentley said over the earpiece, insistent, “more of them. At least fifteen, maybe twenty of those things, all around you. She’s stalling you while they get ready to attack.”

I felt them. Soulless creatures in the dark, closing in but staying just out of sight, their jerky movements like marionettes on a mad puppeteer’s strings. I waved Jennifer close and whispered in her ear.

“Get ready to run for it. She’s got more pets than we have bullets, so make every shot count.” I looked over to the Meadow-thing and shook my head, raising my voice. “You forgot your line, by the way.”

“What line?” Meadow demanded.

“When you rant about your master plan for world domination, you’re supposed to end with ‘but it’s too bad you won’t live to see it.’ I mean, if you’re gonna act like an * pulp villain, at least show some commitment to the part.”

Her hands curled at her sides. “Funny. You won’t be laughing when—”

I leveled the shotgun and blew her head off.

The illusion ripped away in a spray of steel shot and mahogany splinters. The creature before us was nothing but a jointed wooden armature doll, a life-sized version of the tiny puppets artists use for anatomy sketches. It collapsed to its knees, its psychic strings cut.

“When I interrupt you like that?” I said. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just easily amused, but I think that was pretty funny.”

The creatures loomed into view all around us. More mannequins like the first, but their hands were misshapen and melded with metal. Rusted iron hooks, sickles, and wickedly serrated knives glimmered in the dark, ready to rend and tear.

Jennifer took a stainless-steel razor blade from her pocket and rested it on the tip of her tongue. She clenched it between her teeth as she hissed a garbled, barbaric chant. Energy swirled around us like a slow cyclone, raw and brutal. I concentrated, lending my strength to hers, building the embryonic spell into something more powerful than either of us could do alone.

Moving as one, the mannequins attacked.

Jennifer raised her tattooed arm, her revolver clutched in her opposite hand, and viciously ripped the blade in her teeth across her own skin. Blood sprayed out around us, too much blood for the depth of the wound, too much for one human’s body, as the gathered magic crystallized and took form. The spray of blood hung frozen in the air, droplets suspended in space like tiny uncut rubies. Almost immediately her torn skin began to reknit itself under the writhing ink of her tattoos.

The first wave of mannequins hit the curtain of blood and exploded. They blasted backward in a fountain of twisted metal and shattered wood. Jennifer spat out the razor. We ran.