He froze as Fleiss’s fingertips rested on his temples. She moved in, her body pressed to his, their lips inches apart. Then her master closed in against his back. His ethereal photonegative body tingled against Marcel like static electricity. A shadowy hand stroked the nape of Marcel’s neck, another running along his arm. Intimate. Almost arousing. Marcel had been in a threesome once, in Belize, that had started much like this.
Then Fleiss opened her mouth and a prehensile, gnarled tongue spilled out, leaving a trail of slime as it lapped along Marcel’s cheek.
“You would have been the greatest cat burglar of all time,” the Enemy cooed into his ear, his voice hypnotic. “If it hadn’t been for the accident.”
“What…what accident?” Marcel stammered, paralyzed between them.
“You remember. You were five. Your mother was drunk. She was usually drunk. It was Christmas Eve.”
Marcel nodded, his head jerking. “My parents were fighting, shouting. She…she was going to drive us to a motel for the night. My father took her keys away. He threw them in a snowbank, so she couldn’t find them until she sobered up. How did you know about—”
“No,” Fleiss whispered, “he didn’t. He put them in a bowl by the door.”
“He put them in a bowl by the door,” Marcel echoed.
“And you and your mother got in the car,” the Enemy purred, his hands roving over Marcel’s flesh. “Do you remember now?”
Marcel tried to shake his head, but he still stammered. “I-I remember. We got in the car.”
“Yes. Yes. And she slid on a patch of black ice. And you hit a delivery truck head-on.”
Marcel tumbled to the waiting-room rug. Confused, he looked down at himself.
At the lump of scar tissue at one shoulder, where his left arm used to be. At the stump of his right wrist. At the way his tailored slacks fell short at the nubs of his knees, where the surgeons had amputated both of his legs when he was five years old.
He looked across the lobby to one mirrored wall. To his disfigured face, the web of scar tissue marring his emaciated neck, and howled in animal terror.
The Enemy’s pearly teeth bared a Cheshire smile.
“There. Now you won’t be able to endanger yourself or escape. A perfect solution.” He paused. “Also, the shrapnel severed your vocal cords.”
Marcel’s horrified shrieks became a faint, whisper-soft wheeze.
“Much better. Ms. Fleiss, please find a place to put Mr. Deschamps until we need him again.”
Fleiss hefted the struggling, broken man over her shoulder like a sack of groceries.
“Oh, and do make sure he’s comfortable,” the Enemy added. “After all, there’s no need to be cruel about this.”
“As you command, my lord.”
“Then come back around, and we’ll discuss our strategy for dealing with Daniel Faust.”
“I…do have something that might help.”
The shadowy head tilted. “Oh?”
“I caught a glimpse inside his mind just before he escaped. I know how he thinks and what he cares about more than anything else. If we want to draw him out, there’s only one way to do it: go after his friends, his family. I don’t know their names…but I saw their faces.”
The Cheshire smile grew larger. “Excellent. Bring in a sketch artist.”
He flowed through the shifting halls of his empire, to the darkness of his office. The only light in his inner sanctum glowed from a laptop screen. He clicked open an instant messaging program and typed out a quick message to one of his servants.
“Progress on finding the Scribe or the Paladin? Also, looking for information on a target named Daniel Faust. Magician, human, last known location Las Vegas. High priority. Attaching a partial dossier.”
* * *
Another laptop sat on another table in a dark and smoky room, pinging as the Enemy’s message came in. A snake curled around the computer, sinuous, banded with scarlet and yellow scales. Jade-painted nails rapped out a quick response.
“Unfamiliar with this Faust person, but will do some research. Still no progress finding the other targets.”
“Redouble your efforts,” came the response. “This is urgent.”
Naavarasi chuckled. She reached to one side, scooping a handful of rogan josh from a bowl with her left hand and dropping a gobbet of meat down her throat. She swallowed it whole, without chewing, before wiping her fingertips on a cloth napkin and typing her reply.
“Of course, my lord. I live to serve you.”
Off to her right, a cockroach skittered over a discarded paperback. The Killing Floor by Carolyn Saunders. And in the background of her screen, the last email she’d sent still sat in her archive: “Daniel. Care for some inspirational reading? — A Friend.”
A fresh window popped up on her screen. “Everything is in place, Mistress,” it read. “Initiate next stage of the plan?”
Naavarasi gazed across her blood-soaked restaurant, her little slice of hell, and smiled.
“Initiate.”
Afterword
What a topsy-turvy, wild year it’s been. Writing, the launch of the Harmony Black series, writing, discussions about a possible Faust television show, moving house, writing…at this point I’m not entirely sure how to take a day off anymore, but that’s okay. Totally worth it. And now that my publishing schedule has more or less smoothed out (and the Revanche Cycle came to an end with this year’s release of Queen of the Night, the fourth and final chapter. Or did it?), I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be waiting an entire year for another full-length Faust novel again. Which is good, because there’s a lot going on. Plans in motion.
Gotta take a second to give a shout-out to my awesome team: thanks to Kira Rubenthaler for editing, James T. Egan for cover design, Adam Verner’s top-notch audiobook voicework, and the assistance of the always-reliable Maggie Faid. And thank you for reading! I hope to see you again in 2017, when Daniel Faust will learn a dangerous lesson: seizing power is hard enough, but keeping it…well, that can be murder.
Want to get the advance scoop on new books and projects? Head over to http://www.craigschaeferbooks.com/mailing-list/ and hop onto my mailing list. Once-a-month newsletters, zero spam. Want to reach out? You can find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CraigSchaeferBooks, on Twitter as @craig_schaefer, or just drop me an email at [email protected].
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