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.”
“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.”
36.
“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, an
d 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.”
“Like a giant bar fight,” I said. “Right now it’s just a bunch of mean drunks poking at each other, but nobody wants to throw the first real punch. As soon as Sitri and Belephaia get into it, everyone with a hunger for power will jump in, and pretty soon it’s…”
“Armageddon,” Caitlin said. “Nobody is ready for that. We are not ready for that. Oh, we’ll take this planet, Daniel, but on our schedule.”
“It’s a long con. It’s brilliant, is what it is.”
She arched her eyebrow at me. “Hrm?”
I buttoned my shirt, sketching out the scam in my mind. The pieces fell together in perfect symmetry. Everything fit. I just couldn’t see it before now.
“The smoke-faced men. They set Lauren up. Juiced her up somehow, gave her magic and a messiah complex to go with it. Her entire plan is centered around building the Enclave. No idea what she’s trying to do with it or why, some part of her mission to save the world, but that’s the thing: the faceless men don’t give a damn. The Enclave was never going to be built. It’s the bait, the mission they made up to string her along. As far as Lauren’s concerned, opening the box is just going to put a couple of ancient demons under her control. Another tool, more resources, more power. The faceless men gave her twenty years to study, to practice, to gather cash and influence and the will to use it.
“Now the timing is perfect and Lauren has a little cult of followers who are just as driven as she is, guaranteeing the job will get done right. The Box suddenly pops up in the Middle East, off the radar for centuries, but somehow both Lauren’s agents and a tomb raider like Spengler catch wind of it in the same week? I’d bet hard cash they weren’t the only people who heard the news. They were just the first to get there. Spengler only won the race by dumb luck. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The faceless men planted it and spread rumors to make sure it’d be found,” Caitlin said, nodding. “They dropped it right in Lauren’s path when they felt she was ready to pay the price to unlock it. After two decades of slow corruption, she’d be eating right out of their hands.”
I nodded. “Damn right. Not just anybody could murder their families in the name of power and still think they were on the side of the just. That takes some hardcore mental dissonance. All this time they’ve been grooming Lauren and her pals for the big show.”
“My prince,” Caitlin sighed. “That lock has his fingerprints all over it, one of his black jokes. People have come up with all kinds of fantasies about what’s in the Box, but they’d never get near it. Only the ones who knew what was really inside could lay hands on the thing, and the only people who would want to free an angel from its chains are the very sort of people who could never slaughter their loved ones and pluck out their souls for a sacrifice. It’s ingenious. He just didn’t account for it falling in the hands of the manipulated and misguided.”
“Guess he’s not as smart as you think,” I said, then immediately regretted it. I waved a hand, backing off under the weight of her glare. “So who are the smoke-headed nutjobs pulling the strings? They don’t work for hell, so what’s their angle?”
Caitlin shook her head. “There are other forces in the universe. The question will keep. For now, I want you to fly back without me. I need to talk to my prince, to warn him and assess our options.”
“Don’t you want me to stay with you?”
“No, the car won’t even arrive for another three hours at least, and you wouldn’t be welcome where they’re taking me.”
“Um, what about the, uh…” I gestured at her phone.
“What?”
“The, uh, you know. What you said on the phone? The car has to be here in an hour or you’ll make them eat their own skin?”
“Oh!” she said, blinking with surprise. “Oh, no, I only punish willful disobedience. Still, if I didn’t make the threat, they wouldn’t grasp the urgency. It’s a cultural thing.”
#
I felt strange sitting next to an empty seat, waiting for my plane to take off. I hadn’t been far from Caitlin’s side since last night. The sensation of our first kiss was still ripe in my imagination. I missed her already.
It was crazy, the idea of me and her, but sometimes life goes better with a little craziness. The future came with its own pile of worries, but for now I’d play it like I had a fat stack of chips on the table and Lady Luck blessing my hand: let it ride.
Of course, that assumed there would be a future to share with her.
With ten minutes to takeoff, I took out my phone. I had an idea. It was a long shot, but I had to try.
“Carmichael-Sterling Nevada, how may I direct your call?”
“Lauren Carmichael please,” I said.
“I’m sorry, she’s in meetings all day and can’t be disturbed. Can I take a message?”
“Tell her it’s Daniel Faust on the line. She’ll want to talk to me.”
Their hold music was soft jazz. I stared out the window at the tarmac, feeling the seconds slip away.
“You’re not dead,” Lauren said. From her tone I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or impressed.
“Can’t say the same for your boy Tony Vance.”
She hesitated. “That was you? I assumed he committed suicide.”
“You don’t sound broken up about it.”
“He was a soldier. He did his duty.”
“Meaning he handed off his daughter’s soul before taking the permanent high dive.”
“You’ve figured it out,” she said.
“More than you. I’ve been doing some digging. The thing in the Box, it’s not what you think it is. The ring won’t work on it.”
“Of course it will. This has been in the planning for decades.”
“Planned by who? You’re being played, Lauren. You can’t imagine the size of the shitstorm you’re about to unleash.”
“Some collateral damage is expected, but my assistants and I will be well protected, I assure you. We have everything under control.”
I sighed. It was the answer I expected, but I had to try reasoning with her. Plan B was a lot more violent. The speaker over my head chimed, and the gentle voice of the stewardess called for everyone to turn off their electronics.
“You hear that?” I said, taking the opportunity to toss up a smoke screen. “I’m sitting on a plane at McCarran International, bound for Miami. I want to be on the other side of the country when this goes down. Think about that.”
“Meadow’s going to be disappointed. She wants to kill you for what you did to her face.”
“She murdered a buddy of mine. I think I’ve got the bigger grievance.”
“I agree with you,” Lauren said, “but life is rarely just or kind, is it? I’m a rational woman, Mr. Faust, and I believe you’re a rational man. Go to Miami and stay there. If you’ll keep out of my affairs, I’ll keep out of yours. We’ll both sleep much easier that way. Do we have a deal?”
Not a chance in hell.
“Deal,” I said and hung up the phone.
Lauren and her pals wanted to do things the hard way. I was fine with that. For Caitlin, for Stacy Pankow, for Spengler, for Amber Vance…I’d make sure they got exactly what they had coming to them. Every last bit of it.
37.
I flew home, went back to my apartment and paced in the dark. I’d had enough sleep. My brain tugged at the problem like a kitten with a ball of twine, t
ossing it around and getting nowhere fast. Lauren had the Box and her harvest of souls, but there had to be a way to get close to her, to track her down and put a stop to this.
I laughed out loud when I figured it out.
My phone rang at half past sunrise. Caitlin sounded worn down, like she’d run a marathon and lost.
“I just landed at McCarran. Come pick me up?”
I pulled up curbside and she got in, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.
“Something tells me you don’t have good news,” I said.
“The Box,” she said, “until last month, was kept in a place of honor in Prince Sitri’s personal trophy room. He never even knew it was gone until last night because someone not only stole it out from under his nose, they replaced it with a cunning counterfeit.”
I merged into traffic, my brow furrowed. “Sounds like an inside job.”
“We concur. There’s going to be an inquisition, but that doesn’t help us right now. It just confirms that the faceless men orchestrated this entire charade from the beginning. They spread ridiculous myths about the Box around the world for decades, stole it from hell, and dropped it in Lauren’s path. They groomed her for twenty years just to be sure she’d be ready to unlock it. Bloody thing’s not even Etruscan.”
“So what’s Sitri going to do?” I asked. “I mean, if Lauren opens it.”
“Wage war. As he is bound to do, even knowing he’ll herald the apocalypse. Making sure that doesn’t happen is on my shoulders.”
“And mine.”
She smiled, reaching over and touching my arm.
“Our shoulders,” she said. “Take me home? I need a shower and a change of clothes. Then we can plan our next move.”
“I think I know who can help us. It’s a gamble, but if you’re up for it, we might have an inside line on finding Lauren.”
“What do you have in mind?” Caitlin said, tilting her head curiously.
When I told her, she laughed louder than I had.
#
The Gentlemen’s Bet was a dive strip club in a stretch of town where the tourists didn’t go. The noonday sun baked down on a couple of battered cars and a semi tractor in the litter-strewn parking lot. The neon silhouette of a naked woman perched on a pair of dice sat lifeless over the front door, looking down over a tattered red carpet made of painted AstroTurf.
The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 244