Double or Nothing (Daniel Faust Book 7)

by Craig Schaefer

  I wasn’t in the factory anymore.

  The world washed out in static, turning black and white and flickering, as if I’d stepped into an old-time newsreel or a silent movie. A jaunty but off-key melody played on an invisible piano. Bodiless, I gazed upon a theater stage where a man in a top hat and tails—Howard Canton, I recognized him from his poster—stepped into a trunk and crouched down. A smiling showgirl shut the lid and Canton spoke, his tinny words reverberating inside my skull.

  “Translocation is an essential tool of the magician’s craft. Yes, sir, this staple technique makes the ideal climax for an escape—a guaranteed crowd-pleaser every time.”

  The newsreel camera took a dizzying spin and dragged my mind along with it, following a spotlight as it landed upon a balcony high above the stage. Canton emerged, arms high, brandishing his wand. The roar of the crowd broke into crackling static before the image vanished.

  “Daniel?” Caitlin said.

  I snapped back to reality, gunfire pinging off steel and stone all around us. I looked to the bank of lockers against the wall, most of them raked by bullets, a couple of them safe behind our cover.

  “Cait! Can you pull that padlock off?”

  She tilted her head at me. “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  She grabbed the padlock holding the locker shut and twisted it. The old, dented hasp groaned in her fist. Then it broke, showering flakes of rust as she ripped it free. The locker door yawned open. Nothing but cobwebs inside.

  “Trust me,” I said. Then I kissed her on the cheek.

  The wand pulsed in my hand. I threw myself inside the locker, grabbed the door, and slammed it shut. Entombing myself in darkness.

  The world lurched sideways and my stomach lurched along with it. I heard the faint jangling of wind chimes and smelled the scent of fresh, blooming roses.

  Then the darkness cast me out. I staggered into sudden light and noise and found myself up on the catwalk, standing behind two of the shooters. One had a grenade in his hand, raising it high to throw—and far below, I saw Caitlin’s shadow, pinned behind the brick pillar.

  I put two bullets in the back of the grenadier’s head. His buddy turned, shocked. My third shot went straight through his open mouth and punched out the back of his neck. The grenade, a slim metal cylinder, clattered to the catwalk.

  The live grenade, with its pin pulled.

  I ran like hell was on my heels, racing across the catwalk, high above the heart of the factory floor. And hell came, a roaring explosion that washed hot across my back as it slammed me to the scaffolding. My ears rang and the stench of smoldering steel shoved acrid fingers down my throat. The catwalk yawned, its moorings twisted and smoking, and leaned to one side. Tortured struts snapped like twigs, and the ground dropped out from under me.

  The far end of the catwalk fell to the factory floor, turning the rough metal into a slide ending in cold concrete, fifteen feet down. I hit my back, skidding, my stomach lurching into my throat. I landed hard on my shoulder and rolled, crashing against the edge of the dead conveyor belt.

  I looked up, dazed, and stared into the barrel of a gun.

  One of the chemists, in his boxers and surgical mask, gripped an oversized Magnum in both trembling hands. He stood on the belt, legs spread like an Old West gunslinger, and thumbed back the hammer as he aimed down at me. I fumbled for my gun, somewhere off to my left, fingers closing over the grip, but I knew I’d never bring it up in time.

  A blur hit him from behind, knocking him from the belt to the concrete. The Magnum roared and the slug cratered the floor inches from my head. I flinched, turning my face from the shower of chipped stone and dust. A broken chunk of floor shot past and carved a stinging razor slice along my cheek. Caitlin crouched over the chemist like a lioness who’d just run down a juicy gazelle. Then her teeth sank into his throat, and his last breath turned into a ragged, blood-choked gurgle.

  Up on the balcony, on the far end of the factory hall, steel doors burst open. Reinforcements. And we were out in the open. I snapped my fingers and a handful of playing cards leaped from my breast pocket, landing in my outstretched hand. I shoved myself to my feet and stumbled over to Caitlin, my back and legs burning and sticky-wet. My ride down the falling catwalk and the hard stop at the end had left my jacket torn, my slacks looking like someone had taken a cheese grater to the backs of my calves. No time to worry about it now. I threw the cards behind me and they hung in the air, twirling, a pasteboard shield to cover our escape. Riflemen on the balcony opened fire and the cards dropped in a dead flurry, each one catching a bullet for me.

  Caitlin jumped from the throat-ripped corpse and snatched up the dead man’s revolver. She ran alongside me, looking back over her shoulder and firing wildly until the hammer slammed down on an empty chamber, then tossed the gun aside. The covering fire bought us a few seconds as we crossed open ground. Then we were charging up the access hall and bursting out into the parking lot, still hearing the alarm klaxon muffled behind the antique brickwork.

  We couldn’t stop now. My heart hammered my chest, every breath a burning splinter in my side. We ran up the block, to the waiting Audi, and Caitlin tossed me the keys. I jumped behind the wheel. The engine roared to life and I whipped the car around, screeching away from the curb and hooking a hard U-turn on the empty street. I stepped on the gas, aiming for bright lights and traffic, no destination in mind beyond getting the hell out of there.

  Caitlin’s seat yawned back as far as it could go. She lay beside me, eyes shut, her face and chest wet with fresh blood. The blood on her mouth wasn’t hers. The blood plastering her torn blouse, molasses-thick and nearly black, was.

  “Cait?” I said, hearing the tightness in my throat. “What can I do?”

  “You can drive,” she said, exhausted. “What are those bullets called, the ones that…expand inside of you?”

  “Hollow-points?”

  “Mm. Those.” She shifted on the seat, wincing. “That’s what they shot me with. Don’t fret. I hear you fretting.”

  My hands squeezed the steering wheel. “My girlfriend is sitting next to me with three bullets in her, so yeah, I’m fretting.”

  “Takes more than that to stop me.” Her tongue trailed over her upper lip, tasting the dead chemist’s blood. “It just hurts. Excruciatingly. Not the enjoyable kind of pain, either. I’ll be fine in a few hours. Just need to rest and rebuild my body. How did you do that, the…teleportation thing?”

  Good question. The wand sat snug in its wrist sheath, dormant now. Keeping its mysteries to itself.

  “I think…I think Howard Canton just showed me how,” I said. “It’s weird. Back when I faced off with Ecko and grabbed the wand for the first time, I felt a hand passing it to me. I think part of Canton’s spirit is still around. Clinging to his wand, his hat, maybe other pieces of his gear.”

  “Thank him for me,” she murmured. Then she fell asleep, or what passed for it with Caitlin, closing in on herself and conserving energy as her body stitched itself back together.

  * * *

  Sunrise found us on the outskirts of Santa Fe. The gas needle was flirting with the edge of a cliff, so I pulled into a Shell station, staggered out of the car, and swiped my card at the pump.

  “The Network,” Jennifer said, her sleepy drawl echoing in my ear. “That old urban legend? For realsies?”

  I cradled my phone against my shoulder and popped the Audi’s gas cap. “Well, either it’s a new twist on the old recruitment scam or it’s the real deal. Nedry believed it, that much I’m sure of. And he’s gotten a serious power upgrade since the last time we crossed swords, so whoever he’s working for, they deliver the goods.”

  “We gotta dig deeper into these lawyers. I got some guys trailing our buddy Malone around—when he has his next meeting with Weishaupt and Associates, we’re gonna have ears in the room.”

  “Tell them to be careful,” I winced as I squeezed the pump trigger, a pulled muscle twinging along my shou
lder. “We could be at the edge of an iceberg here. No idea how big it is under the surface.”

  “I’ll show ’em the dead giant cockroach. They’ll be plenty careful.”

  I was being stared at. On the opposite side of the pump, a guy with a minivan—stick figure family in the back window and a school-hockey bumper sticker—kept looking from me to the Audi and back again.

  I caught my reflection in his tinted window. My hair was a mess, one shoulder of my jacket ripped at the seams, my pants dirty and torn. I followed his gaze to the car. Caitlin lay slumped and unconscious in the passenger seat, her mouth crusted with dried blood.

  “Costume party,” I told him. I raised one hand, hooking it into a claw. “Rarr. I’m a zombie. Rarr.”

  He found something else to look at. I went back to my phone call.

  “Keep me posted,” I told Jennifer. “We’ve got another six hours on the road before we hit Denver.”

  “Havin’ a good trip otherwise?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “A nice romantic vacation, you know, aside from nearly getting killed by a mad scientist and a gang of drug dealers in the middle of goddamn Albuquerque. You know where I don’t want to die, Jen? Albuquerque.”

  Hockey dad was staring at me again. I locked eyes with him and slowly opened my jacket, showing him my shoulder holster. He stepped backward until he disappeared behind his side of the pump.

  “And now we have to visit Naavarasi,” I said. “She eats people. So that’ll be fun.”

  “She still insisting Chicago’s shape-changer wasn’t one of her kin?”

  “She’s the last of her kind. She’s adamant about it.”

  The thought had been nagging at the back of my mind, though, ever since our showdown with the Chicago Outfit. They had a shifter of their own, Kirmira. We fought fire with fire and hired Naavarasi to lure him into a killing room.

  “Jen,” I said, “out of curiosity, how’s your place fixed for surveillance?”

  “Like every good purveyor of medicinal substances, I cultivate a healthy sense of paranoia along with my crops. Damn near every inch of the compound is wired for video and sound. Why?”

  “Right before Naavarasi took him out, Kirmira said something. I don’t know what language it was, but he definitely said something to her.”

  “And then she snapped his neck. Musta been the wrong question. You want me to pull the audio?”

  “Yeah, if you’ve got the time. I’ll take it over to the university when I get back, maybe see if they’ve got a language-studies department or something.”

  “Done and done,” she said.

  The pump clicked. I shut the gas cap and got back in the car. Caitlin murmured as I fired up the ignition, her blood-flecked fingertips sleepily brushing against my hand. I drove north, heading for Denver.

  10.

  Colorado was a field of green and faded gold, mountains and rolling forests dressed in the colors of autumn. A late October chill hung in the air, crisp as a ripe apple, and I smelled the musty tang of a leaf fire in the distance. Caitlin stirred a couple of hours into the drive. She groaned softly, shifting in her seat and rubbing at her eyes with one balled-up fist.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” I said. “How are you?”

  Her hand closed over mine. She gave me a contented smile.

  “My guardian,” she sighed, “standing watch over me while I heal.”

  Her other hand rummaged inside her torn blouse, digging through matted gore. Her fingers plucked out the remnants of a mushroomed slug, the metal blown-out and jagged. She gave it a dubious look and flicked it to the mat at her feet.

  “Almost good as new,” she said.

  “You hungry?”

  “I am.” She glanced down at her chest. “That said, I’m not exactly fit for being seen in public at the moment, and you’re only marginally better-off.”

  “Relax,” I said. “I’ve got this covered.”

  I found a motel just off the highway, and she waited in the car while I ran into the front office and checked in. Inside room eight, floral curtains opened onto a clean queen-size bed and a span of faded beige carpet.

  “Here we go,” I said. “Privacy, a shower, and all the hot water you can use. You can get cleaned up while I run out and buy us some new clothes. Don’t know about you, but everything else I packed is vacation-casual, and I assume we need to look sharp for this meeting.”

  “I’ll write my sizes down.”

  I tapped the side of my head. “Already know ’em.”

  “You memorized,” she said with a tilt of her head, “my clothing sizes.”

  “You memorized mine. Only seemed fair.”

  She reached out and took hold of my shirt, bunching up the fabric in her hand, and pulled me close. Her blood-encrusted lips brushed lightly against mine.

  “You,” she murmured. “I’m keeping you.”

  * * *

  I came back with an armload of bags, squeezing my way through the motel room door. Caitlin stepped from the bathroom wrapped in a white towel, her skin scrubbed pink, trickles of steam leaking out from the doorway.

  “Found a diner down the road that does carry-out,” I said, setting half my bags on the bed and spreading out the rest on a long dresser beside the TV set. “Got scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage links, they threw a couple of Danishes in. I told them to give us a little of everything.”

  “‘Everything’ is exactly what I’m hungry for.” She dipped her hand into a Macy’s bag, tugging out a ribbed cashmere sweater in the color of a gathering storm. Her eyebrows lifted. “Catherine Malandrino? Considering you had to shop retail, nicely chosen on short notice.”

  “I know it’s not your usual haute couture, but I did my best.”

  I was already wearing my purchases. No time for a tailor, so I kept it simple: pleated slacks and a mint-green button-down shirt. Business casual.

  We dug into the food. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I started eating, but my growling stomach made sure I got the message. I walked to the bathroom with the last strip of bacon dangling from my mouth, unbuttoning my shirt on the way. My own wounds were mostly under the surface, splotchy bruises already rising across my back and my scraped-up legs, but a hot shower sounded like a little patch of paradise right about then. I luxuriated under the spray and let the heat and the steam sap my tension away. My steel-tense muscles finally started to unclench.

  The curtain rattled. Caitlin stepped into the shower with me. Her warm, naked body pressed against my back.

  “Thought you might want company,” she murmured in my ear.

  I turned to face her. The cascade of water flowed down over my scalp, coursing against my bruised shoulders, as our lips met and my hands caressed her hips.

  “Besides,” she said, “I used up a considerable amount of energy healing myself, and I have to replenish my strength. I’m hungry for more than hash browns.”

  I put on a face and pulled away, but not too far. “Ooh, so it’s not about me at all. I’m just a food source for you.”

  “A delicious and nutritious one,” she said, nodding earnestly. “You’re better than chocolate.”

  “I feel so…filthy,” I said, kissing her again. “And used.”

  Her hand slid up my back. Her fingers twined in my wet hair, pulling tight.

  “Good,” she purred, playful. “Wouldn’t want you to misunderstand the situation.”

  I traced the curve of her hips with my fingers, the curve of her neck with my lips.

  “You know we’re going to be late for the meeting,” I said.

  “Fashionably.” She gave me an impish smile. “Besides, Naavarasi has an exceptionally keen sense of smell.”

  We turned, slowly, guided by her hands. She pushed me back against the shower wall, the tiles cool against my back. Her fingers tugged at my hair and urged me to lift my chin. To bare my throat to her. I felt the pearly touch of her teeth.

  “I’m just marking my territory,” she whispered.

&
nbsp; * * *

  Caitlin drove the rest of the way, smiling like a cat in an aviary. I rode at her side, pleasantly aching, watching wisps of cloud drift over the white-capped mountains. We rolled into Denver a little after three in the afternoon.

  Baron Naavarasi’s domain didn’t look like much from the outside. The Blue Karma was a strip-mall Indian restaurant squeezed between a nail salon and a liquor store. It didn’t look like much on the inside, either. Just a hole-in-the-wall with cheap, wobbly chairs and faded ivory tablecloths dotted with blue flowers. The scent of hot curry hung in the humid air. Caitlin gave the waitress a polite smile.

  “We’re here to see the proprietor. She’s expecting us.”

  The girl silently pointed to a beaded curtain in the back of the room.

  My stomach muscles tightened as we walked through the restaurant. I’d been back there before. Once. Caitlin didn’t say anything, but I knew she sensed what I was feeling. Her hand closed over mine. She gave it a reassuring squeeze as we stepped through the beads and into another world.

  A stone corridor lay beyond the curtain, lit by guttering torchlight. It stretched out into darkness, too far to be possible without cutting into the alley behind the strip mall. Yet here it was. We walked side by side into the shadows.

  Another beaded curtain waited at the end of the corridor. And beyond it, another restaurant.

  It was the same size and shape as the Blue Karma, the same layout, but that’s where the similarities ended. The flowered tablecloths in the Blue Karma weren’t crusted with dried gore. No black roaches, their antennae wriggling, squirmed across blood-soaked carpet. No shades sat in rusted chairs, flickering in and out of sight as their forms writhed in silent anguish.

  The coppery stench of blood lodged in my throat, choking my breath. And under that smell, under the odor of rancid meat, lingered something faint and almost indescribably sweet. I looked across Naavarasi’s tiny kingdom, across filthy plates and skittering vermin, and my mouth still watered.