The desert air tasted like dried salt. A dying wind ruffled my shirt, and the sun beat down upon trackless Nevada sands. The highway was long out of sight, leaving me all alone, a nomad in the wasteland. I got my bearings, studied the stone, and began to walk.
An hour on foot, trudging through the sand, and my car was a distant memory too. I checked my cell phone. No signal. Vultures wheeled in the distance, circling a sky the color of warm slate. Even in October, the heat left my shirt plastered to my back, sweat running a tickling, gritty finger down my spine. At the third stone marker I paused just long enough to open another bottle of water, drinking as I walked.
Then the fourth, turning me in a fresh direction, toward the rising wall of rock. And the fifth, pointing the way down a narrow gap, the ground hard and tangled with dead scrub. I eased between the towering and jagged rocks, sunlight filtering down from far above, toward a dark opening in the stone. The mouth of a forgotten cave. The scent of fresh roses hung in the air, carried by a vapor I could only see when my eyes slipped out of focus. A vapor drifting from the cave like a plume of smoldering incense.
I steeled myself, my heart beginning to pound, my muscles fighting me as I approached the mouth of the cave. Just like they had seventeen years ago, when—spending my nights creeping through Bentley and Corman’s backroom bookshelves, reading the texts they’d said were too advanced for me, too dangerous—I’d first read the legend of the Mourner of the Red Rocks.
Some said she was a survivor of a forgotten era, one of the elder races. Some said she was a spirit of the Paiute Indians, from a legend so old even they had forgotten it. Wherever she’d come from, she had been here before Vegas, before the first settlers from the east. Maybe before the desert and the towering, congealed-blood rocks that named her. The Mourner—never call her that to her face, never ask who she’s mourning—knew secrets. The Mourner—remember your courtesies, show no fear or hesitation in her presence—might share them, if she felt so inclined.
Or you might join the others who had petitioned her and failed. The ones whose stripped and sandy bones littered the mouth of her cave, half-buried by time. More bones dangled on lengths of rotting rope like rattling wind chimes, a curtain of death marking the line between the outside world, the relative safety of the open desert, and her realm in the dark beneath.
I pushed through the curtain of bones, jaws and femurs clacking against one another, and stepped into the shadows.
The cave tunnel wound and turned down into the gloom, and I felt my way with my palm pressed to cool, rough stone. Then, up ahead, the lonely glow of candlelight.
The candle rested upon a small, round table of knotty and dark-stained wood, the table’s legs carved to resemble twists of petrified ivy wrapped around the boughs of a dead tree. Two high-backed chairs faced one another across the table, with a silver tea service on an ivory tray sitting between them. The Mourner wore white, from her heavy lace veil to the floor-length hem of her gown, her hands concealed under silken gloves.
Her fingers were too long for her hands. And as she reached for the silver teapot, they curled around the handle like boneless worms. She lifted her face, invisible behind the thick white lace, toward me.
“Daniel Faust.” Her words emerged as a sibilant whisper. “You have returned to me.”
“You remember me?” My voice uncertain.
I hovered at the edge of the candlelight. Her response was a slow, languid gesture to the empty chair. I sat down as she poured tea into a pair of silver cups. The steam carried the scent of dried flowers.
“I remember a young sorcerer, with no fear and great potential. And look at you now.”
I didn’t reach for the cup before me. Not until she did.
“I’ve been places,” I said.
Her voice went cold. “You have been nowhere. You have done nothing. Is that why you return to me now? To ask for death, for disappointing me so dearly?”
I froze in my chair, the knotted wood hard against my back. That wasn’t the reception I’d been expecting.
Part of me wanted to jump up and run for the exit. And part of me knew enough about the Mourner to realize I’d never make it out of this cave alive. She was faster than she looked. Much faster.
“I’ve…I’ve done a lot,” I told her. “I saved the world once.”
“And what is the value of a planet? I’ve seen planets born, seen them die, seen them born anew. This one, too, will die in its proper hour, and another will take its place. It is lives that interest me. I expected you to become a master of your art. A legend in the annals of sorcery. And what are you now? A beggar and a trickster, adrift and aimless. You are a boat with no oars and no rudder, a helpless pawn of the tides. You have allowed yourself to rust, Daniel Faust. And I despise rust.”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and shook my head.
“I might have…gotten sidetracked. Distracted a little. Hey, maybe my life doesn’t fit some ideal road map, with goalposts and milestones. But whose does? Human lives are messy. We screw up, we make bad decisions. Then we pick ourselves up and try again. That’s how it works.”
“Do you even have a map? Do you have an ambition?”
“I do,” I said. “I’m trying to stop a…I’m not sure what he is. He’s called the Enemy, part of this legend, a prophecy I can’t tie to anything in my books. I was hoping you’d know something—”
“Silence,” the Mourner hissed. “Again, you miss the point. What is your ambition? You’ve been given a life. What do you aim to do with it?”
I slumped in the chair, grasping for something to say. She lifted her cup of tea, slipped it under her veil, and took a long, slurping sip. I left mine untouched.
“Once,” she said, “I was a slave to an unworthy master. My ambition was freedom. And I became free, though the price was dear. Ambition is the fuel of triumph. The lever that moves worlds. What you insist is your goal is nothing more than a shroud over the empty hollow inside of you. So long as you keep running in place, you can lie to yourself and pretend you’re traveling somewhere.”
I threw up my hands. “Fine. You know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I got lazy somewhere along the way. Maybe I just never got a handle on my life. And maybe I can change. Maybe I want to change, and I’m trying to figure out how. But right now, the Enemy is on the move, and I can’t beat him alone.”
“You don’t need to defeat him at all,” she replied. “I know the creature of which you speak. That isn’t your fight. Walk away.”
“He made it my fight.”
“No. He made you a tool, which he then discarded. You were lucky to survive the experience. You won’t survive it twice. You should consider the rest of your life a gift.”
“My life,” I told her, “isn’t his gift to give.”
“No. It’s mine.”
She folded her gloved hands on the table. Her boneless fingers rippled, bending backward, squirming in the fresh silence.
“I still see a shred of potential in you. Go forth and make something of it. If you don’t, you won’t have to come and see me again to meet your death. I’ll come to you. Now go.”
I pushed back my chair, just an inch, but I didn’t rise. I knew I should. Knew I’d just survived a round of Russian roulette and here I was, spinning the chamber and putting the gun to my head one more time.
“Please,” I said. “I came a long way to see you. I took my life and put it in your hands. Don’t send me away with nothing. Tell me something about the Enemy, something I can use.”
She nodded at my untouched cup.
“If you wish to stay, then drink your tea.”
I picked up the silver cup. Felt its warmth, a trickle of steam rising from the ink-brown tea. If that’s what it was. I knew the rules of sitting with the Mourner of the Red Rocks. Knew she could change the brew to rat poison on a whim. Or battery acid.
I wouldn’t know unless I drank it. And she wouldn’t speak another word until I did. The risk was the price
you paid for knowledge. Her little game.
She was right. The last time we’d met, I had a world of potential ahead of me. I didn’t know when I’d gone off the rails, or how, or why. Whoever I thought I’d grow up to be, a guy with no job, no cash, couch-surfing and scrounging to survive wasn’t it. If I stayed, insisting on information she had no interest in giving me, would she kill me out of sheer irritation? Or would it show her that I still had some tenacity left, that I hadn’t given up?
I pulled the trigger.
“Here’s to your health.” I put the cup to my lips and swallowed the liquid down. The tea, rich and hot, warmed my stomach and left an herbal aftertaste on my tongue.
“Still fearless,” she replied, her voice carrying the hint of a smile behind her veil.
“Not fearless. Seventeen years ago, I was too young to know what I was risking. I’m old enough, now, that dying means something to me.”
“But you drank nonetheless.”
“Not fearless,” I told her. “Just determined.”
“Then have your reward for the risk,” she said and raised her cup to mine.
6.
“I am versed in the language of time,” she told me. “I see your not-yet-maybe stretching out before you, a tree of binary choices. Turn left, turn right. Say yes, say no. With every choice made, your life changes forever. Many of these branches lead to a permanent cessation of decisions. And soon.”
“A cessation,” I echoed.
“Dead ends. But even if you evade every snare in your path, make every right choice, and stride through the hurricane unscathed, I see your darkest hour on the other side of the storm. You will come to a point where all is lost, where your foe’s fingers are wrapped around your throat.”
“Sounds like a Tuesday,” I told her. Fronting with bravado I didn’t feel. The cave air felt clammy on my skin, hot-damp and prickling at the back of my neck.
“In that moment, as your last breath escapes you, remember one thing: a question. This question. Ask yourself, ‘Where would you hide it?’”
I tilted my head at her. The teacup nestled in my palm, warm, still steaming, a tiny wisp of vapor rising up between us.
“Where would I hide what?”
She responded by taking a long, slow, slurping sip of tea. I could feel her smiling at me on the other side of the veil. She set her teacup down.
“Remember the question,” she said, “and when the time is right, you’ll know the answer.”
“Great. A riddle. This isn’t telling me where to find the Enemy.”
“No. It’s telling you how to survive the next four days. I think you’d agree that’s a bit more important.”
“And I’m not unappreciative,” I said, “but how am I supposed to track this guy down if that’s all I have to go on?”
“By being clever,” she replied. “You have wit and guile. Use them. Or better yet, don’t. The creature you hunt would destroy you without a second glance. You aren’t ready to face him.”
I set down my cup, pushed my chair back—its black iron legs scraping on the worn cavern floor—and stood.
“I’ll find an angle. I always do.”
“So eager to start another pointless war. So eager to leave another battle unfinished.”
I paused, about to turn away. “What do you mean by that?”
“I can see your history trailing out behind you like ruins in your wake. Plans left unfulfilled, deeds left unfinished, schemes half-done and bleeding their complications out across the canvas of your life. You’ve skipped along from moment to moment, crisis to crisis, never cleaning up the damage you’ve left behind you. The pattern of your outer life mirrors the pattern of your heart. And until you change your ways, until you bring your life and your heart into accord, you will never be strong enough to face the Enemy.”
She lifted her cup to me. And though I couldn’t see her face behind the ivory veil, I could feel her gaze cutting through me like a scalpel. All that I was, exposed before her.
“Your free ride just ended,” she said, “and the consequences you’ve escaped for so long have become wolves, circling your doorstep. Forget the Enemy. Abandon this pursuit. And cure your heart, if you hope to survive.”
* * *
I left the Mourner’s cave with more mysteries than I’d brought in with me. The noonday sun greeted me with a wave of arid heat and diamond picks for my eyes. I squinted, shrouding my brow with my hand until my vision adjusted to the light. Then I followed the first stone marker, spotting ghosts of my own footprints in the shifting desert sand.
She’d answered my questions with a riddle. Where would I hide it? It gave me something to think about on my way back to the car, though my long walk didn’t bring me any closer to a solution. I couldn’t drive off just yet: in my absence the windows had spent hours catching the sun, turning the car into a tiny green furnace. I opened the doors to let it air out for a minute. Close enough to civilization to get a signal, I checked my phone while I waited.
Four messages from Jennifer. Shit.
I hadn’t forgotten that we’d made plans; I just hadn’t remembered exactly how far the Mourner’s cave was from the highway, and how long it would take me to get there and back again. As it stood, I about to be late for a meeting I really didn’t want to miss.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said, cradling the phone to my chin as I wheeled the Spark around and made for the highway. “I’m on my way right now.”
“S’okay,” she drawled, with a tone that told me I wasn’t entirely forgiven. “They’re runnin’ late too, though I think they’re just stalling to throw their weight around. Two can play that game. Where’ve you been, anyway?”
Jennifer, the sister I never had, was another person who didn’t need to know I’d been drinking tea with the Mourner. I could imagine the lecture I’d get for taking that kind of risk: pretty much exactly like the one I’d get from Bentley and Corman, but with a lot more creatively foul language.
“Eh,” I said, “just got a little tied up this morning.”
“Ooh. You were with Caitlin.”
“Huh? Why would you assume—” I paused. “Not literally, Jen.”
She snickered. “Little slow on the uptake today. Better chug a mug of coffee and bring your A game, sugar, there’s some plum weirdness afoot. I need you watching my back.”
“On my way.”
Not as directly as I hoped. My phone buzzed as I pulled out onto the highway, and I recognized the number at a glance. It wasn’t a name I’d put in my address book, for his safety and for mine.
“Detective Kemper.” I tucked the phone against my cheek and checked the rearview. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“The taphouse on East Charleston Boulevard. Get your ass over here. Now.”
“Not that I wouldn’t love to hang out, but I’m kind of in the middle of something—”
“Get over here,” he said, “or I might just forget to keep my mouth shut about your miraculous resurrection.”
I knew this was coming eventually. I’d needed Gary Kemper’s help after my prison break, to shut down a civil war in the criminal underworld. We’d both come out ahead—me with my life and my freedom intact, him with a few juicy arrests—but now he had leverage over me in the worst way. One phone call to the feds—or worse, straight to Harmony Black—and I’d be a hunted man all over again.
“Food for thought, Gary: when you’ve got weight on somebody, you want to be real careful about how you use it. Go swinging that stick around too often, you might just hurt yourself.”
“Or I might send you straight back to Eisenberg Correctional. Stow the tough-guy act, Faust. Your life is in my hands and we both know it. So when I tell you to be somewhere, you do it. East Charleston. One hour, or I start making phone calls.”
He hung up. I set my phone in the cupholder, stared at the desert sky, and drove. This wasn’t going to stand. I’d fought too hard, given too much to win my freedom back, just to spend the rest of my l
ife as Gary Kemper’s errand boy. Still, I couldn’t be reckless: Kemper wasn’t stupid. I was sure he’d set up a contingency, some envelope full of dirty secrets—including mine—that’d go to the authorities if he wound up missing. Besides, I’ve got a rule about not killing cops. By now I’ve broken most of my personal rules, one way or another, so I cling that much tighter to the ones I have left. For now, until I found a way to get my own leverage over him and return the favor, I could only play it one way. Straight and narrow.
The taphouse wasn’t hard to spot, not with the line of squad cars out front and a couple of sad sacks in pressed uniforms holding back a curious crowd. I’d passed a trio of ambulances on the way over, their lights off and rolling slow, carrying passengers too late to save. Not hard to guess why, when I saw the river of broken glass outside the corner bar. The place had gone through a wood chipper. A twisted Budweiser sign hung limp as a corpse out a shattered window, the wall riddled with bullet holes. Not just one shooter, I guessed, and not armed with popguns either. The door, propped open with a bright orange construction cone, looked in on a tavern gutted by fire. More bodies lined up on the sidewalk outside, covered in starched white sheets, waiting for their free ride to the morgue.
I parked down the block and shouldered my way through the crowd. So many cell phones in the air, snapping pictures like paparazzi, you’d think they’d spotted a celebrity. Great vacation photos, I thought and tried to keep my face turned away from the cameras. The uniform held up a beefy hand to block my way, but Kemper—dressed in plainclothes and beet red in the face—hustled over to wave me through.
The Castle Doctrine (Daniel Faust Book 6) Page 4