The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(87)
Streamers of pale white light slithered from the soul-traps like snakes’ tongues licking the air. The streamers stretched toward the Box, crackling as they made contact with its onyx hasp.
“You really don’t want to do this,” I told Meadow. “You really don’t.”
“Shut up,” she snarled. “We win, you lose. Simple as that.”
The streamers tightened. They were lances now, pulsing and throbbing with pure soul-energy as they spread pools of blazing light in every nook, cranny, and recess of the casket’s face. Sheldon’s chant grew louder, and louder still, spiraling into a raw-throated ecstatic cry.
The Box opened.
Forty-Three
I shouldn’t have looked.
I knew I shouldn’t have looked, but as the Box slowly opened, swinging on ancient hinges, I sat in the perfect spot to take a peek inside. What I saw would haunt my nightmares forever.
A space bigger than the casket that contained it, infinitely bigger, bathed in blinding light. A feathered wing covered in thousands of blinking, staring eyes, each a different color, each pronouncing a different judgment on my corrupt heart. Knowing every sin I’d ever committed and every sin I ever would commit, my heart nearly bursting under the weight of their raw hatred. I saw the tip of a yellowed and rotting bone spear, long and wickedly curved, then realized I was looking at a fingernail…
One of the streamers of light sputtered. It yanked me from my reverie, hauling me back from the edge of madness and focusing my attention on the soul-traps. Sheldon looked at them, dumbfounded, shaking his head as the errant light crackled and whipped back, recoiling into its pouch as if rejected.
If you can’t change the odds, change the game.
I just leaned back and smiled.
“The number of souls is five,” I said, echoing what the smoke-faced man had told Lauren so many years ago. “What was it he said? ‘To open the Box without the requisite sacrifice invites the wrath of its guardians.’ Something like that?”
Lauren looked at me, torn between outrage and sudden terror. “What did you do?”
“It must not be denied that I am a plain-dealing villain,” I said, the smile slipping from my face as my eyes went hard. “I f*cked you over, that’s what.”
The storm tunnel stank of mildew and regret. Stacy’s pouch rested heavy in my hand. Her half-formed wraith hovered across the line of dust, tortured mouth wide in a soundless wail.
“I know. I’m so sorry. I want to free you, but…I need to hold onto this, just a little while longer. I swear to you, though. I swear to you, I’ll be back as soon as I’m done.”
“My timing had to be perfect,” I told Lauren, “and it was. I let Sheldon hit me, so he could knock me right into the tray of soul-traps. Once I went down, palming one of the pouches and switching it with Stacy’s half-empty one was easy. Four and a half souls. You opened the box without the proper sacrifice. Gotta think that’s going to hurt.”
The Box slammed shut. A new light boiled from the ebony casket itself, violent and swirling, the color of orange stained glass. Sheldon looked over, pinned in place, trembling as he called out.
“L-Lauren?”
The other soul-traps snapped closed, their lights whipping back into the pouches, rejected and undevoured.
“Lauren!” Sheldon screamed, just before the orange light ate him alive.
It crashed over him like a rogue wave, flooding his mouth, saturating his skin, motes of brilliant fire swirling around him. The motes ate him like a school of piranha feasting on a bleeding calf. Skin tore away in tiny chunks, blood spattering the stage, the light shredding him one nickel-sized bite of flesh at a time.
Meadow lunged at me, pressing the barrel of her gun to my forehead. I’d been waiting. I jerked my head to the side and grabbed the pistol, twisting it hard and yanking it from her grip. She dove out of the way as I fired off two fast shots. The bullets went wide, shattering a glass table and sending burning candles to the floor, a tablecloth igniting.
Sheldon’s eyes exploded. Still transfixed by the light, he shrieked endlessly as it chewed him down to ragged muscle and bone. Lauren ran from the stage, throwing up a desperate shield to ripple the air as I snapped off another shot. Meadow waited by the emergency stairwell, holding the door open.
“Lauren!” Meadow shouted. “Let’s go!”
“You’re not leaving,” I snarled, giving chase. Then I froze and looked back. The Silverlode was going down in flames, literally. If I abandoned the pouches on the stage, they’d be lost forever. Maybe the souls trapped inside would be freed when the enchanted leather burned, but maybe they wouldn’t.
I could settle up with Lauren and Meadow another time. Cursing under my breath, I dove for the stage as hungry tendrils of orange light snapped like whips just above my head. I grabbed the tray, clutched it to my chest, and rolled clear as Sheldon’s ravaged corpse collapsed in a bloody heap. I didn’t stop running until I hit the emergency stairwell, pausing just long enough to count the pouches and stow them in my pockets.
A few floors down, a metal door rattled and chunked shut. I took the concrete steps two at a time, swinging around the handrails. By the time I hit the eighth floor my heart was pounding like a kettledrum and my breath was ragged, but there wasn’t a second to lose. Bentley had said the fire escape topped out on the eighth floor. That must be where Lauren and Meadow were headed, and it’d be my way out too.